This volume presents a series of vibrant profiles that trace the evolution of our knowledge about the brain. Beginning almost 5,000 years ago, with the ancient Egyptian study of “the marrow of the ...skull”, the book takes us on a fascinating journey from the classical world of Hippocrates, to the time of René Descartes and the era of Paul Broca and Santiago Ramón y Cajal, to modern researchers such as Roger W. Sperry. We meet Galen, a man of titanic ego and abrasive disposition, whose teachings dominated medicine for a thousand years; Andreas Vesalius, a contemporary of Nicolaus Copernicus, who pushed our understanding of human anatomy to new heights; Otto Loewi, pioneer in neurotransmitters, who gave the Nazis his Nobel prize money and fled Austria for England; and Rita Levi-Montalcini, discoverer of nerve growth factor, who in war-torn Italy was forced to do her research in her bedroom. For each individual, the philosophy, the tools, the books, and the ideas that brought new insights are examined. The book also looks at broader topics: How dependent are researchers on the work of others? What makes the time ripe for discovery? And what role does chance or serendipity play? Many fascinating background figures are also included, from Leonardo da Vinci and Emanuel Swedenborg to Karl August Weinhold—who claimed to have reanimated a dead cat by filling its skull with silver and zinc—and Mary Shelley, whose Frankenstein was inspired by such experiments.
Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) is best remembered for his belief that bumps on the skull reflect the growth of small, underlying brain areas, though among some historians, more positively for ...introducing the concept of cortical localization of function. All but one of Gall's 27 settled-upon cortical faculties involved the cerebral cortex, the exception being his most primitive faculty, reproductive instinct, which he associated with the cerebellar cortex. This article examines Gall's earlier subcortical organs, with an emphasis on why he associated the cerebellum with this drive. It draws from accounts by several physicians, who attended his Vienna lectures or heard him speak in Germany and the Netherlands in 1805-1806 i.e., before he published his finalized list in his
(1810-1819). These early accounts show that early on he localized at least four faculties in brainstem structures, including a reproductive drive in the cerebellar cortex. He based his structure-function association primarily on cranial differences between men and women, and what he found in males and females of other species, although cranioscopy was not his sole method. It is also shown that, in opposition to his cerebellar-reproductive drive association, Marie Jean Pierre Flourens linked coordinated skeletal movements to the cerebellum after conducting lesion experiments, mainly on birds. Flourens did not design his experiments to challenge Gall's ideas on localization of function, but they did just that. Gall responded that ablation methods lack precision and lead to misguided conclusions. How Gall continued to associate the reproductive instinct with the cerebellar cortex, even after deleting his other brainstem-based associations from his faculties of mind, tells us much about him and the faith he had in his methods and doctrine.
Selected byChoicemagazine as an Outstanding Academic Title Among his many accomplishments, Benjamin Franklin was instrumental in founding the first major civilian hospital and medical school and in ...the American colonies. He studied the efficacy of smallpox inoculation and investigated the causes of the common cold. His inventions-including bifocal lenses and a "long arm" that extended the user's reach-made life easier for the aged and afflicted. InDoctor Franklin's Medicine, Stanley Finger uncovers the instrumental role that this scientist, inventor, publisher, and statesman played in the development of the healing arts-enhancing preventive and bedside medicine, hospital care, and even personal hygiene in ways that changed the face of medical care in both America and Europe. As Finger shows, Franklin approached medicine in the spirit of the Enlightenment and with the mindset of an experimental natural philosopher, seeking cures for diseases and methods of alleviating symptoms of illnesses. He was one of the first people to try to use electrical shocks to help treat paralytic strokes and hysteria, and even suggested applying shocks to the head to treat depressive disorders. He also strove to topple one of the greatest fads in eighteenth-century medicine: mesmerism.Doctor Franklin's Medicinelooks at these and the many other contributions that Franklin made to the progress of medical knowledge, including a look at how Franklin approached his own chronic illnesses of painful gout and a large bladder stone. Written in accessible prose and filled with new information on the breadth of Franklin's interests and activities,Doctor Franklin's Medicinereveals the impressive medical legacy of this Founding Father.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894) was a Boston physician, a professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School, and a writer of prose and poetry for general audiences. He was also one of the ...most famous American wits of the nineteenth century and a celebrity not bashful about exposing costly, absurd, and potentially harmful medical fads. One of his targets was phrenology, and the current article examines how he learned about phrenology during the 1830s as a medical student in Boston and Paris, and his head-reading with Lorenzo Fowler in 1858. It then turns to what he told readers of the Atlantic Monthly (in 1859) and Harvard medical students (in 1861) about phrenology being a pseudoscience and how phrenologists were duping clients. By looking at what Holmes was stating about cranioscopy and practitioners of phrenology in both humorous and more serious ways, historians can more fully appreciate the "bumpy" trajectory of one of the most significant medical and scientific fads of the nineteenth century.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), the American humorist and author better known as Mark Twain, was skeptical about clairvoyance, supernatural entities, palm reading, and certain medical fads, ...including phrenology. During the early 1870s, he set forth to test phrenology-and, more specifically, its reliance on craniology-by undergoing two head examinations with Lorenzo Fowler, an American phrenologist with an institute in London. Twain hid his identity during his first visit, but not when he returned as a new customer three months later, only to receive a very different report about his humor, courage, and so on. He described his experiences in a short letter written in 1906 to a correspondent in London, in humorous detail in a chapter that appeared in a posthumous edition of his autobiography, and in The Secret History of Eddypus, the World Empire, a work of fiction involving time travel, which he began to write around 1901 but never completed. All three versions of Twain's phrenological ploy are presented here with commentary to put his descriptions in perspective.
In 1908-1909, Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863-1944), best remembered for The Scream (1893), spent eight months under Daniel Jacobson's care in a private nerve clinic in Copenhagen. Munch was ...suffering from alcohol abuse, and his signs and symptoms included auditory hallucinations, persecutory delusions, paresthesias, paralyses, violent mood swings, depression, loss of control, fatigue, and the loss of his basic ability to take care of himself. He was treated with rest, a fortifying diet, massages, baths, fresh air, limited exercise, and nonconvulsive electrotherapy. After he had settled in, Jacobson allowed Munch to draw, paint, and engage in photography. Munch responded with a portrait of Jacobson and a small but intriguing sketch of himself at one of his electrotherapy sessions. In this article, we examine the circumstances that brought Munch to Jacobson's clinic and his therapies, with particular attention to electrotherapies. In so doing, we hope to provide a more complete picture of Munch's crisis in 1908, his nerve doctor, the rationales for medical electricity and other treatments he endured, and Scandinavian psychiatry at this moment in time.
In 1908, Norwegian artist Edvard Munch-already famous for The Scream and other paintings showing sickness, despair, and suffering-put himself under the care of Dr. Daniel Jacobson, a nerve doctor in ...Copenhagen. Jacobson had previously attended some of Jean-Martin Charcot's lectures in Paris, as had Knud Pontoppidan, his mentor. Munch, in turn, had long been showing signs and symptoms of an anxiety disorder and what might have been viewed as neurasthenia or hysteria. Now, he also seemed to be suffering from acute alcoholic toxicity. In this article, we explore Scandinavian psychiatry at the turn of the century; Jacobson and Pontoppidan's connections to Paris; and how some of Munch's treatments, most notably his electrotherapy sessions, related to therapeutics at La Salpêtrière. Additionally, various ways in which Munch learned about French medicine are examined. This material reveals how well-known and influential Charcot and his ideas about disorders of the brain and mind had become at the turn of the century, affecting not just the French physicians but also a world-famous artist and his nerve doctor in Scandinavia.In 1908, Norwegian artist Edvard Munch-already famous for The Scream and other paintings showing sickness, despair, and suffering-put himself under the care of Dr. Daniel Jacobson, a nerve doctor in Copenhagen. Jacobson had previously attended some of Jean-Martin Charcot's lectures in Paris, as had Knud Pontoppidan, his mentor. Munch, in turn, had long been showing signs and symptoms of an anxiety disorder and what might have been viewed as neurasthenia or hysteria. Now, he also seemed to be suffering from acute alcoholic toxicity. In this article, we explore Scandinavian psychiatry at the turn of the century; Jacobson and Pontoppidan's connections to Paris; and how some of Munch's treatments, most notably his electrotherapy sessions, related to therapeutics at La Salpêtrière. Additionally, various ways in which Munch learned about French medicine are examined. This material reveals how well-known and influential Charcot and his ideas about disorders of the brain and mind had become at the turn of the century, affecting not just the French physicians but also a world-famous artist and his nerve doctor in Scandinavia.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain; 1835–1910), American humorist and writer, followed scientific and medical developments, and relished exposing questionable practices and ideas. In his youth, he ...pondered how phrenologists were assessing character, and in 1855 he copied sections of a phrenology book and a skull diagram into a notebook. Later, in London, he had two phrenological examinations by Lorenzo Fowler—one without and the other after identifying himself. Following his “test,” which produced contrasting results, he began to ridicule phrenologists and phrenology in Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and other works. He underwent at least two more head readings in the United States, and in Eddypus, an unfinished work from 1901 to 1902, he maintained that phrenologists base their insights primarily on how people dress and answer questions. Although now lampooning the craniological tenets of phrenology, Twain never seemed to reject the idea of distinct faculties of mind associated with specialized brain organs.
Franz Joseph Gall's (1758–1828) doctrine of many faculties of mind with corresponding cortical organs led him to be accused of materialism, fatalism, and even atheism. Yet little has been written ...about the specific charges he felt forced to respond to in Vienna, while visiting the German States, or in Paris, where he published his books. This article examines these accusations and Gall's responses. It also looks at what Gall wrote about a cortical faculty for God and religion and seeing intelligent design in the functional organization of the brain. Additionally, it presents what can be gleaned about his private thoughts on God and organized religion. We conclude that Gall was sincere in his admiration for and belief in God the Creator, but that as an enlightened scientist was recognizing the need to separate metaphysics from the laws of nature when presenting his new science of man.
PDF
