Wallace on St. Peter’s restoration

When restoration of a Michelangelo painting in St. Peter’s at the Vatican revealed the later addition of some elements, the resulting dispute pit art against theology and history. Michelangelo expert William Wallace comments in the Independent.

“Disturbances” reviewed in the THE

In a great Times Higher Education piece, professor of psychology David Smail reviews Disturbances of the Mind by Douwe Draaisma.

In this cleverly constructed book, several of the puzzles of present-day neurology are considered alongside accounts of the lives and times of those with whom they are eponymously associated. Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and Korsakoff’s, Tourette’s and Asperger’s syndromes feature among the better-known instances, but lesser-known syndromes such as the those of Clerambault and Capgras (perhaps more psychiatric than neurological) are also considered. Each receives a chapter to itself.

The author’s particular skill is in making his subject matter interesting at several levels and to different groups of readers. His accounts of the successes and sorrows of those who are seen (not always accurately, as he points out) as the discoverers of these well-known diseases are historically vivid without resorting to hagiography; and the story of the fortunes of their brain-children as they negotiate the fluctuations of medical and social fashion since their conception is absorbing.