The Neurologists: A History of a Medical Specialty in Modern Britain, C.1789-2000 Hardcover - 2014

From the rear cover

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.'