Michael Faraday’s “loss of memory” revisited

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the mid-1970s, the psychiatrist Edward Hare published two accounts of Michael Faraday’s memory symptoms, based upon which he suggested the diagnostic possibilities of an amnesic syndrome related to a transient ischemic attack in the vertebrobasilar cerebrovascular system. This article revisits the contemporary evidence of Faraday’s letters and the notes of his physician, Peter Mere Latham, and considers subsequent responses to and shortcomings of Hare’s analysis. In light of more recent conceptualizations of memory disorders, a new formulation for Faraday’s memory symptoms is suggested: namely, that he manifested a functional cognitive disorder.