There are wonderful descriptions of cases before Hughlings Jackson— such as Parkinson’s “Essay on the Shaking Palsy,” as early as 1817—but no general vision or systemization of nervous function. Jackson is the founder of neurology as a science. One can browse through the basic volumes of Jacksoniana: Taylor, J., Selected Writings of John Hughlings Jackson. London: 1931; repr. New York: 1958. These writings are not easy reading, though often evocative and dazzlingly clear in parts. A further selection, with records of Jackson’s conversations and a memoir, had been almost completed by Purdon Martin at the time of his recent death, and will, it is Jioped, be published in this sesquicentennial year of Jackson’s birth.
Head, like Weir Mitchell (see below under Chapter 6), is a marvellous writer, and his heavy volumes, unlike Jackson’s, are always a delight to read:
Studies in Neurology. 2 vols. Oxford: 1920.
Aphasia and Kindred Disorders of Speech. 2 vols. Cambridge: 1926.
Goldstein’s most accessible general book is Der Aufbau des Organis-mus (The Hague: 1934), translated as The Organism: A Holistic Approach to Biology Derived from Pathological Data in Man (New York: 1939). See also Goldstein, K. and Sheerer, M., “Abstract & concrete behaviour,” Psychol. Monogr. 53 (1941).
Goldstein’s fascinating case-histories, scattered through many books and journals, await collection.
The greatest neurological treasure of our time, for both thought and case description, is the works of A. R. Luria. Most of Luria’s books have been translated into English. The most accessible are:
The Man with a Shattered World. New York: 1972. The Mind of a Mnemonist. New York: 1968.
Speech & the Development of Mental Processes in the Child. London: 1959. A study of mental defect, speech, play, and twins.
Human Brain and Psychological Process. New York: 1966. Case histories of patients with frontal lobe syndromes.
The Neuropsychology of Memory. New York: 1976.
Higher Cortical Functions in Man. 2nd ed. New York: 1980. Luria’s magnum opus—the greatest synthesis of neurological work and thought in our century.
The Working Brain. Harmondsworth: 1973. A condensed and highly readable version of the above. The best available introduction to neuropsychology.
CHAPTER REFERENCES
Macrae, D. and Trolle, E. “The defect of function in visual agnosia.” Brain (1956) 77: 94-110.
Kertesz, A. “Visual agnosia: the dual deficit of perception and recognition.” Cortex (1979) J 5: 403-19.
Marr, D. See below under Chapter 15.
Damasio, A. R. “Disorders in Visual Processing,” in M. M. Mesulam (1985), pp. 259-88. (See below under Chapter 8.)
Korsakov’s original (1887) contribution and his later works have not been translated. A full bibliography, with translated excerpts and discussion, is given in A. R. Luria’s Neuropsychology of Memory (op. cit.), which itself provides many striking examples of amnesia akin to that of “The Lost Mariner.” Both here, and in the preceding case history, I refer to Anton, Potzl, and Freud. Of these only Freud’s monograph—a work of great importance—has been translated into English.
Anton, G. “Uber die Selbstwarnehmung der Herderkrankungen des Gehirns durch den Kranken.” Arch. Psychiat. (1899) 32.
Freud, S. Zur Auffassung der Aphasia. Leipzig: 1891. Authorized English tr., by E. Stengel, as On Aphasia: A Critical Study. New York: 1953.
Potzl, O. Die Aphasielehre vom Standpunkt der klinischen Psychiatrie: Die Optische-agnostischen Storungen. Leipzig: 1928. The syndrome Potzl describes is not merely visual, but may extend to a complete unawareness of parts, or one half, of the body. As such it is also relevant to the themes of Chapters 3, 4, and 8. It is also referred to in my book A Leg to Stand On (1984).
Sherrington, C. S. The Integrative Action of the Nervous System. Cambridge: 1906. Esp. pp. 335-43.
---------. Man on His Nature. Cambridge: 1940. Ch. 11, esp. pp.
328-9, has the most direct relevance to this patient’s condition.
Purdon Martin, J. The Basal Ganglia and Posture. London: 1967. This important book is more extensively referred to in Chapter 7.
Weir Mitchell, S. See below under Chapter 6.
Sterman, A. B. et al. “The acute sensory neuronopathy syndrome.” Annals of Neurology (1979) 7: 354-8.
Potzl, O. Op. cit.
Leont’ev, A. N. and Zaporozhets, A. V. Rehabilitation of Hand Function. Eng. tr. Oxford: 1960.
Sterman, A. B. et al. Op. cit.
Weir Mitchell, S. Injuries of Nerves. 1872; Dover repr. 1965. This great book contains Weir Mitchell’s classic accounts of phantom limbs, reflex paralysis, etc. from the American Civil War. It is wonderfully vivid and easy to read, for Weir Mitchell was a novelist no less than a neurologist. Indeed, some of his most imaginative neurological writings (such as “The Case of George Dedlow”) were published not in scientific journals but in the Atlantic Monthly in the 1860s and 1870s, and are therefore not very accessible now, though they enjoyed an immense readership at the time.
Purdon Martin, J. Op. cit. Esp. ch. 3, pp. 36-51.
Battersby, W. S. et al. “Unilateral ‘spatial agnosia’ (inattention) in patients with cerebral lesions.” Brain (1956) 79: 68-93.
Mesulam, M. M. Principles of Behavioral Neurology (Philadelphia: 1985), pp. 259-88.
The best discussion of Frege on “tone” is to be found in Dummett, M., Frege: Philosophy of Language (London: 1973), esp. pp. 83-89.
Head’s discussion of speech and language, in particular its “feeling-tone,” is best read in his treatise on aphasia (op. cit.). Hughlings Jackson’s work on speech was widely scattered, but much was brought together posthumously in “Hughlings Jackson on aphasia and kindred affections of speech, together with a complete bibliography of his publications of speech and a reprint of some of the more important papers,” Brain (1915) 38: 1-190.
On the complex and confused subject of the auditory agnosias, see Hecaen, H. and Albert, M. L., Human Neuropsychology (New York: 1978), pp. 265-76.
In 1885 Gilles de la Tourette published a two-part paper in which he described with extreme vividness (he was a playwright as well as a neurologist) the syndrome that now bears his name: “Etude sur an affection nerveuse caracterisee par l’incoordination motrice accompagnee d’echo-lalie et de coprolalie,” Arch. Neurol. 9: 19-42, 158-200. The first English translation of these papers, with interesting editorial comments, is provided by: Goetz, C. G. and Klawans, H. L., Gilles de la Tourette on Tourette Syndrome (New York: 1982).