HISTORY OF BRITISH NEUROLOGY by F Clifford Rose (Imperial College School of Medicine, UK) Diseases of the nervous system are a relatively small but vitally important part of medicine. There was no scientific basis for diagnosis or treatment until the seventeenth century when Dr Thomas Willis (16211675) and his team tackled anatomy by dissection of the nervous system, physiology by animal experiments and pathology by post-mortem analysis. It was Willis who first used the word "neurology" and his team, who were among the founders of the Royal Society, included Christopher Wren who, besides being famous as an architect of London's churches, drew the first modern diagram of the human brain. Developments in our knowledge of the nervous system in the following centuries, and the unique importance of clinical neurology, became globally recognised through the work of Whytt, Heberden, Hughlings Jackson, Gowers and many others. The work and discoveries of these eminent specialists were extended with the introduction of such neurosciences as neurophysiology, neuropathology and neuro-radiology, and this is the first comprehensive account of a battle with the unknown by determined practitioners.

Neurologists, neuroscientists, neurosurgeons, and medical historians from North America, Europe, and Asia explore three centuries of British neurology offer biographies of leading characters of the period, illustrated with bandw photographs, as well as contributions discussing such concepts as the evolution of British neurology in comparison with other countries and three early 19th century British neurological texts. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This is the first complete defined vocabulary for all parts of the human nervous system that can be seen with functional imaging methods. One main part is a lexicon of standard and nonstandard terms, and another main part is a set of hierarchical nomenclature tables of standard terms.

Recent developments have extended our knowledge of the basic functions of nerves: notably, the demonstration of the mechanism within nerve fibers which transports a wide range of essential materials. In order to understand how this discovery occurred, it is necessary to examine its history. The story begins in ancient Greece when nerves were conceived of as channels through which animal spirits carried sensory impressions to the brain. As science developed, the discoveries of various physical and chemical agents supplanted the agency of animal spirits until the molecular machinery of transport was recognized. In this fascinating and complete history, Sidney Ochs begins with a chronological look at this path of discovery, followed in the second half by a thematic approach wherein the author describes the electrical nature of the nerve impulse, fiber form and its changes in degeneration and regeneration, reflexes, learning, memory and other higher functions in which transport participates.

First multi-year cumulation covers six years: 1965-70.