Mozart at play: the limitations of attributing the etiology of genius to tourette syndrome and mental illness.

There has been a persistent attempt to explain Mozart's talent as connected to physical and mental illness. While Mozart's musical compositions and performances were often acclaimed for their "taste," the composer's personal behavior sometimes astonished those who witnessed "blödeln" or wild horseplay, practical joking, and scatological humor. Most recently, Mozart's eccentric behavior has been attributed to Gilles de la Tourette syndrome.

Norman Geschwind and the use of history in the (re)birth of behavioral neurology.

When Norman Geschwind (1926-1984) attended medical school in the 1940s, his psychiatry professors taught as if behavior were unrelated to neuropathology. The focus of neurology remained the diagnosis and treatment of aphasias and epilepsies, while cognitive impairments and developmental disorders were classified as functional (psychological) disorders. Geschwind was troubled by the fact that many of the patients he saw with neurological deficits also presented with behavioral (developmental) disorders.

A tale of Congress, continuing medical education, and the history of medicine.

Well-intentioned attempts by the Senate Finance Committee to improve the content and quality of continuing medical education (CME) offerings had the unanticipated consequence of decimating academically oriented history of medicine conferences. New guidelines intended to keep CME courses free of commercial bias from the pharmaceutical industry were worded in a fashion that caused CME officials at academic institutions to be reluctant to offer CME credit for history of medicine gatherings. At the 2013 annual conference of the American Association for the History of Medicine, we offered a novel solution for determining CME credit in line with current guidelines.

Autism, lateralisation, and handedness: a review of the literature and meta-analysis.

A number of recent investigators have hypothesised a link between autism, left-handedness, and brain laterality. Their findings have varied widely, in part because these studies have relied on different methodologies and definitions. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to assess the literature, with the hypothesis that there would be an association between autism and laterality that would be moderated by handedness, sex, age, brain region studied, and level of autism.

Why are there (almost) no left-handers in China?

Surveys of Chinese students since the 1980s report that less than 1% are left-handed. This is an extraordinarily low number given the generally accepted view that between 10 and 12% of humans are left-handed. Are there actually very few left-handers in China and, if so, why? A number of sometimes overlapping reasons have shaped Chinese attitudes toward left-handedness.

Deficit or creativity: Cesare Lombroso, Robert Hertz, and the meanings of left-handedness.

In the first decade of the twentieth century two influential researchers attempted to explain the origin and impact of left-handedness in human history. The first, the Turin physician Cesare Lombroso, often referred to as the father of modern criminology, was nearing the end of his long distinguished career. Lombroso tied left-handedness to criminality, insanity, and feeble mindedness.

Retraining left-handers and the aetiology of stuttering: the rise and fall of an intriguing theory.

Many twentieth-century British and American educators, psychologists, and psychiatrists advocated forcing left-handed children to write with their right hands. These experts asserted that a child's decision to rely on his or her left hand was a reflection of a defiant personality that could best be corrected by forcible switching. The methods used to retrain left-handers were often tortuous, including restraining a resistant child's left hand.

Sports participation and problem alcohol use: a multi-wave national sample of adolescents.

Background: Sports participation, though offering numerous developmental benefits for youths, has been associated with adolescent alcohol use. Differences also exist between men/boys and women/girls in both sports participation and patterns of alcohol-related behaviors, but there are few longitudinal investigations of this relationship.

Purpose: This study investigated the relationship between school-based sports participation and alcohol-related behaviors using data from a multiwave national study of adolescent men/boys and women/girls.

An old autopsy report sheds light on a "new" disease: infantile polyarteritis nodosa and kawasaki disease.

Although Kawasaki disease (KD) was first discovered and identified in Japan by Kawasaki in the 1960s, fatal KD cases resulting from coronary artery aneurysms had been identified retrospectively in the West as early as 1871. Kawasaki initially postulated that this disease was a new, as yet unidentified, self-limiting illness with no fatal coronary sequelae. The connection between fatal cases, then diagnosed as infantile polyarteritis nodosa, was not made until the late 1970s.

Sports-specific factors, perceived peer drinking, and alcohol-related behaviors among adolescents participating in school-based sports in Southwest Georgia.

This study investigated the relationships among sports-specific factors, perceived peer drinking, and alcohol-related behaviors among adolescents, examining sex differences in the relationship between perceived peer drinking and alcohol-related behaviors. A questionnaire assessing demographics, sports-specific factors, perceived peer drinking, and alcohol-related behaviors was administered among 378 adolescents who were mostly male (76.3%) and non-Hispanic black (70.

Kawasaki disease in India: increasing awareness or increased incidence?

Reports of Kawasaki disease (KD) throughout India are increasing. This article addresses the question of whether the increased diagnosis of KD in India represents the emerging recognition of an illness that had been previously obscured by misdiagnosis, or whether KD is new to India and is increasing in incidence.Whichever answer turns out to be correct, the burden of KD is likely to pose a significant challenge to the health-care system in India in the coming years, due to the high cost of treatment and the potential for lifelong cardiovascular sequelae.

An integrated approach to addressing addiction and depression in college students.

The authors present an integrated, interdisciplinary approach to address the problem of increasing student mental health issues on college campuses. The model uses addiction and depression as lenses into the problem and links residence life and academic and community internship experiences. The project has a positive impact on student attitudes and actions and strengthens and broadens the campus network required to ensure optimal student mental health.

The two emergencies of Kawasaki syndrome and the implications for the developing world.

Kawasaki syndrome (KS) is the most common cause of acquired pediatric heart disease in the developed world. There have been 2 distinctive patterns for the emergence of KS that are likely related to several factors including exposure to the causative agent(s) and host genetics. In Europe and North America where we presume the genetic susceptibility seems to be low, KS has existed in the pediatric population for more than a century and is associated with relatively low incidence.

Taking biology seriously: the next task for historians of addiction?

Despite more than a century of attempts to control the use of addictive substances, prevalence rates continue to grow for most of them. Exceptions are tobacco and alcohol use, which, nevertheless, remain major public health concerns. Why have these attempts at drug control had little success? This question is addressed in the histories of substance use that are examined in this essay.

Lung cancer, chronic disease epidemiology, and medicine, 1948-1964.

Beginning in the early 1950s, a series of epidemiological, biochemical, pathological, and animal studies demonstrated a link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. A number of reputable scientists challenged these findings, but for a variety of reasons, including the behavior of the tobacco industry, historians have assumed that these objections were insubstantial and disingenuous. Viewing these objections in scientific and medical perspective, however, suggests that there was a legitimate and reasonable scientific controversy over cigarette smoking and lung cancer in the 1950s and early 1960s.

The narratives of Kawasaki disease.

Kawasaki disease is a rash/fever illness of early childhood in which coronary artery aneurysms (CAA), sometimes fatal, may develop in up to 25 percent of untreated children. Because its etiology and pathophysiology are unknown and no diagnostic laboratory test exists, diagnosis is made via a list of clinical signs; however, a significant number of children fail to meet the clinical criteria and go on to develop CAA. We suspected a connection between these missed cases and the continuing difficulty in identifying the etiological agent(s) and mechanisms for CAA.