Hammond, Lincoln, and the emergence of American neurology
Jack Riggs Morgantown, West Virginia, USA Surgeon General William A. Hammond (public domain) All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts. -William Shakespeare Shakespeare’s words describe the extraordinary life of William Alexander Hammond.1-8 […]
Faith, neuroscience, and “the thorn” in Paul’s side: Abrahamic interpretations of epilepsy
Christina Perri Stony Brook, New York, USA Despite the stigma surrounding epilepsy in the Abrahamic faith traditions, some Christian art uses the boy with epilepsy as a visual metaphor for the Passion. As the boy appears to die and rise from a seizure, so too Christ dies and rises to Heaven. The experience of […]
Parkinson’s disease, the enduring eponym
The man who described what Jean Charcot six decades later called “la maladie de Parkinson” was a man of many parts. In his youth he studied Greek and Latin, and also learned shorthand, which he considered an essential skill for a doctor. He was an avid collector of fossils, minerals, and shells, and went on […]
Kinnier Wilson
Samuel Kinnier Wilson (1878-1937), one of the greatest neurologists of the first half of the twentieth century, described in 1912 under the title “progressive lenticular degeneration” what became known as “Wilson’s disease.” Born in New Jersey to a Scottish mother and an Irish missionary Presbyterian minister, he went to Scotland for his education, graduated from […]
William Alexander Hammond
JMS Pearce Hull, England, United Kingdom Figure 1. William Alexander Hammond In much of the nineteenth century, ”internal medicine” dominated medical practice in the United States. Specialism was widely disdained and faced hostility and scepticism,i, not least from the influential Sir William Osler: There are, in truth, no specialties in medicine, since to know […]
Pierre Marie (1853-1940)
Pierre Marie (1853-1940) was a French neurologist and native of Paris who after finishing medical school started as an intern under the famous neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, worked through the ranks, and eventually was appointd to the chair of neurology at the Faculty of Medicine from 1917-1925. One of Marie’s early contributions was a description of acromegaly […]
Jules Dejerine
Jules Dejerine originated in Savoy and grew up in the then provincial atmosphere of Geneva, where his father was a carriage proprietor… Young Dejerine had a powerful physique. At the Lycée Calvin he was better known for his swimming and boxing then for his devotion to study…. Nevertheless, he did well in school…left for Paris […]
Multiple [disseminated] sclerosis
“Disseminated sclerosis was described pathologically in the 1830s by Cruveilhier in Paris and Carswell in London, but clinical accounts were sketchy. It was known only to the cognoscenti and regarded as a great rarity. Charcot was the first to diagnose the disease during life, and from 1860 onwards Charcot and Vulpian, and later Charcot […]
Death from uremia
“Your grandmother is doomed,” [the doctor] said to me. “It is a stroke brought on by uremia. In itself, uremia is not necessarily fatal, but this case seems to me hopeless. I need not tell you that I hope I am mistaken.” [Then] there was a moment when the uremic trouble affected her eyes. For […]
Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland
Rayda Aaishah Joomun Mauritius Diagram A: Total Macrosomatognosia Author Dedication To Deelshad Reezuana, The most beautiful Alice I met, May you rest in peace in Wonderland… “Thus grew the tale of Wonderland: / Thus slowly, one by one, / Its quaint events hammered out / And now the tale is done, / And home we steer, a […]