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Mark Jackson, L. Stephen Jacyna and Stephen T. Casper, editors. The Neurological Patient in History., The American Historical Review, Volume 118, Issue 3, June 2013, Pages 828–829, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/118.3.828
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Several decades ago, when I was a medical student at a London teaching hospital, I learned the mysterious art of neurological examination. Lasting sometimes over an hour if performed in its entirety, the procedure, which was designed to carefully trace the operations of the voluntary and involuntary nervous systems as well as the coherence of cognitive functions, appeared to constitute the apotheosis of clinical skill. Within this neurological scheme, the patient tended to be obscured rather than revealed by the collective tools and interpretative powers of the clinician. After all, there was little that could be done for most neurological patients beyond delivering a simple diagnosis and a generally pessimistic prognosis. The aim of The Neurological Patient in History is to explore the history of such encounters between patients and doctors and the narrative and clinical techniques that bind them.
The introduction offers a firm, if rather familiar, account of the place of patients in, or more often their absence from, histories of medicine. Given the recurring focus on the “construction” of the neurological patient throughout the volume, a clearer discussion of the methodological value of the concept as an enduring thread through the various analyses would have helped. The major part of the volume is neatly structured into pairs of chapters that explore accounts of neurological disease from the perspectives of doctors, patients, and their families; the courts; and patient groups. In the concluding section, two scholars reflect on historians' constructions of the neurological patient. Overall, the collection offers a satisfyingly eclectic, if sometimes fragmented, account of how patients have been diagnosed and treated and how they have experienced health and illness during the last one hundred and fifty years.
