A SHORT HISTORY OF NEUROLOGY.

Abstract

In some instances certainly it is true that those who ignore the lessons of history are likely to repeat the mistakes of earlier generations. Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) thought a little differently, feeling that no great man lives in vain, that history is the essence of innumerable biographies and that the history of the world is but the biography of great men. Interest in the history of medicine has mushroomed in the last decade or two and individual biographies, hospital histories, specialist journals such as the Journal of the History of the Neurosciences and sections in general journals such as Archives of Neurology , Neurology (Minneapolis) , The Lancet , the Journal of The Royal Society of Medicine and others have conveyed the lessons of history to a wider readership. Dr Frank Clifford Rose, Director of the London Neurological Centre and Chairman of the World Federation of Neurology Research Group on the History of the Neurosciences, is the Editor of this superb yet concise volume, the first of a pair that describes some of the important British contributions to neurology. This volume covers the years 1660–1910 in a series of 20 articles within 282 pages, including a good index. The references in the 20 chapters are legion—over 700 references, a few duplicated but a mine of information from which to chase primary sources. Rose himself writes on John Fothergill (1712–1780), James Parkinson (1755–1824) and on three writers of early nineteenth-century British neurological texts, namely John Cooke (1756–1838), Charles Bell (1774–1841) and Marshall Hall (1790–1857), advancing still further Rose's prolific contributions to the history of the neurosciences. In fact, this volume forms part of the proceedings of the Mansell Bequest Symposium which was held at the Medical Society of London (founded in 1773) and uses the term Neurohistory—a new word now to …