Hughlings Jackson on joking.

Hughlings Jackson devoted his 1887 presidential address to the Medical Society of London to the psychology of joking. Based on an analysis of that lecture, York offers insights into Hughlings Jackson’s personality and ideas about neurophysiology, and comments on the continuing utility of Hughlings Jackson’s views on humour for physicians and patients.

Hughlings Jackson's neurological ideas.

Hughlings Jackson's neurological ideas are scientifically valid and practically useful. He began by emphasizing the focal lesion as the key to analysing patients' symptoms. He proclaimed that 'Epilepsy is the name for occasional, sudden, excessive, rapid, and local discharge of grey matter.

Localization of language function in the twentieth century.

In the twentieth century the method of identifying pathology in patients with aphasia has fluctuated between localizing and holistic theories. The practical localization of sensation and voluntary movement became a clinical commonplace in the beginning of the century, but the mental component of aphasia made its localization controversial. In Paris before the war, Pierre Marie made the localization of aphasia the centerpiece of his personal feud with Jules Dejerine.

Chapter 3: neurology in ancient Egypt.

Neurology, in the modern sense, did not exist in ancient Egypt, where medicine was a compound of natural, magical and religious elements, with different practitioners for each form of healing. Nevertheless, Egyptian doctors made careful observations of illness and injury, some of which involved the nervous system. Modern scholars have three sources of information about Egyptian medicine: papyri, inscriptions, and mummified remains.

Hughlings Jackson's suggestion for the treatment of epilepsy.

John Hughlings Jackson articulated a neurologic method of systematically evaluating the anatomy, physiology, and pathology of every patient with neurologic disease. He used this mode of analysis to develop a theory of the physiology of epilepsy. We examined an example of his method in a newly discovered, unpublished manuscript containing his suggestions for the treatment of epilepsy based on his physiologic ideas.

Weir Mitchell's observations on sensory localization and their influence on Jacksonian neurology.

Background: John Hughlings Jackson (1835-1911) in London was critical in advancing the concept of cerebral localization. Hughlings Jackson, however, did not work in a vacuum. Silas Weir Mitchell (1829-1914), in Philadelphia, published several clinical observations related to localization.

Commentary. The diseases of Alexander the Great.

The accompanying articles that speculate that Alexander the Great had a traumatic carotid dissection or congenital cervical scoliosis demonstrate the difficulties in retrospective diagnosis as a historical enterprise. The extant primary sources were written centuries after Alexander's death and are ambiguous in their original languages, and even more so in translation. Thus we cannot be certain what illness Alexander actually had.

Motor testing in neurology: an historical overview.

Systematic testing of muscle tone, bulk, and strength and analysis of the distribution of abnormal findings is a key element of bedside cerebral localization. A codified neurological examination was developed in the 20th century, but physicians have commented on weakness since antiquity. The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans described weakness in patients with head injuries and strokes, explaining it in terms of the pathophysiology of their times.

Getting started: objectives and justifications in the history of neurology.

Contemporary historiographical ideas have the potential to enrich the history written by practicing neurologists. Neurology is a science, and historians of neurology might profit from considering the experiences of historians of other sciences. An explicit consideration of the range of possible objectives, justifications, sources and methods of historical research may open new and exciting avenues of inquiry.