Eponyms of 'romantic science'

Abstract

Language is the armoury of the human mind; and at once contains the trophies of its past, and the weapons of its future conquests. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Biographia literaria, XV1, 182) Professor Douwe Draaisma published Disturbances of the Mind in Dutch in 2006. Cambridge University Press has now made it available (Draaisma, 2009 a ) to English readers by publishing Barbara Fasting’s translation. Douwe Draaisma has already enjoyed popular acclaim for his books, which include Metaphors of Memory (2001) and Why life speeds up as you get older (2004). The historical essays in Disturbances of the Mind cover well-trodden ground, but the style and writing are refreshingly different from most published articles and books relating to these subjects. The topics subsume both classical, organic neurological diseases and neuropsychiatric disorders with a mixture of organic and psychogenic aetiologies. The contents include: Parkinson’s disease, Phineas Gage’s cranial injury, Broca’s area, Jacksonian epilepsy, Alzheimer’s disease and Brodmann’s areas; as well as the syndromes of Bonnet, Korsakoff, Gilles de la Tourette, Clerambault, Capgras and Asperger. An intriguing book, it not only acquaints us with the tales of how these selected disorders were originally described, but also raises many issues that relate generally to biography, and to the value and limitations of the use of eponyms themselves. The author shrewdly but controversially observes that what happens after a first description is more important than the discovery itself. He glides seamlessly from his well-referenced eponymous descriptions to the subsequent developments in each topic, outlining more modern research data and opinions, and often conjecturing about the cause of the disorder. Draaisma does not refrain from controversy. He enlivens these yarns, and provides many fascinating, valuable clinical diversions and reference sources (displayed as footnotes) that, although not comprehensive, are nonetheless valuable because not all are widely known. The flavour …