 Physicians of ancient Greece treated diseases , including epilepsy , by altering their patients ' diet . An early treatise in the Hippocratic Corpus , On the Sacred Disease , covers the disease ; it dates from c . 400 BC . Its author argued against the prevailing view that epilepsy was supernatural in origin and cure , and proposed that dietary therapy had a rational and physical basis . In the same collection , the author of Epidemics describes the case of a man whose epilepsy is cured as quickly as it had appeared , through complete abstinence of food and drink . The royal physician Erasistratus declared , " One inclining to epilepsy should be made to fast without mercy and be put on short rations . " Galen believed an " attenuating diet " might afford a cure in mild cases and be helpful in others . 
