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.

The reader need not be a professional medic or psychologist to appreciate these accounts, but nor will the relevant professionals be bored or disappointed by them: Douwe Draaisma’s research is thorough and his treatment of the issues penetrating as well as clear. He has a rare talent for writing informatively and entertainingly without losing depth.However, this is not just a historical account, and Draaisma does not merely record events. One of the more fascinating aspects of the book is the clarity with which it demonstrates that what were (in the main) neurological puzzles in the past remain neurological puzzles today. We are no clearer now about the significance of the tics and compulsive imprecations shown by his patients than was Gilles de la Tourette when he first described them more than a century ago; controversy over the origins of “childhood autism” is no more resolved than it was in Hans Asperger’s and Leo Kanner’s heyday; the sombre tale of Alzheimer’s disease highlights the frustrating lack of progress in understanding the processes involved, let alone treating them successfully. The advance, if one can call it such, of medical science is a halting and uncertain affair…

Keep reading at the Times Higher Education >>