An ode to his mistress: ‘Lady Neurology’

Abstract

It was with considerable trepidation that I agreed to review the latest book by Andrew Lees, Brainspotting: Adventures in Neurology. Given comparisons in the lay press with Oliver Sacks, I was expecting a work of case studies of unusual neurological syndromes (‘The North American who mistook an oblong inflated object for a football!’). Instead, Lees provides us with an autobiographical account of his personal adventures in neurology, in the process vividly reminding those of us who made this their chosen field why we truly love the subspecialty. Given the importance of clinical phenomenology to his subsequent career choice of movement disorders, I was especially intrigued and edified by his childhood love of birdwatching. This, combined with colour blindness forced him to recognize birds, not as most birders do by their plumage, but by their patterns of flight, walking or hopping (indeed, he would not have been able to recognize the Norwegian Blue by its ‘beautiful plumage’, but he certainly would have been able to tell that it was a dead parrot!). He subsequently added to this a unique appreciation for bird calls through the poetry of John Clare.