The neurologists describes how Victorian physicians located in a medical culture that privileged general knowledge over narrow specialism came to be transformed into the specialised physicians we now call neurologists. Relying entirely upon hitherto unseen primary sources drawn from archives across Britain, Europe and North America, this book analyses the emergence of neurology in the context of the development of modern medicine in Britain. The neurologists thus surveys the patterns of change and modernisation that influenced British medical culture throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In so doing, it ultimately seeks an account of how neurological knowledge acquired such an expansive view of human nature as to become concerned in the last decades of the twentieth century with the human sciences, philosophy, art and literature.
Autorentext
Stephen T. Casper is Assistant Professor in History of Science at Clarkson University
Klappentext
Since the 1990s, the English-speaking world has seen the rise of a neuroculture derived from neurology and neuroscience. This book asks: how did we arrive at this moment? What is it about neurology and neuroscience that makes neuroculture seem self-evident? To tell this story, The neurologists charts a chronological course from the time of the French Revolution to after the 'Decade of the Brain' that outlines the rise of medical and scientific neurology and the emergence of neuroculture. With its focus chiefly on Great Britain, arguably the place where it all began, it describes how Victorian physicians located in a medical culture that privileged general knowledge over narrow specialism came to be transformed into the specialised physicians now called neurologists. Recasting the received history of neurology and the history of professions and specialties, it provides new insights into the social, cultural, and institutional practices of British medical and scientific culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Delving into how and why physicians and scientists were interested in nerves, the nervous system, the brain, and the psyche, The neurologists explores how Renaissance-styled men and women of medicine and science made neurology the medical field seemingly most concerned by the 'philosophical status of man.'
Inhalt
Introduction: from physician to neurologist1. Physicians in neurological societies: neurologists in general medical societies2. World War I and the transformation of neurology3. Neurology in interwar Britain4. Neurology and state medicine5. The integrative legacy of contemporary neurologyBibliographyIndex