Medicine, Mind, and the Double Brain: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Thought by Anne Harrington

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Synopsis

"Anyone interested in the differences in function between the left and right brain hemispheres will find Anne Harrington's ?binturicul? Account a freshening and sobering revelation. Far from being a new field of neuroscience, cerebral laterality was the center of significant and impassioned controversy in the latter half of the nineteenth century, with ramifications into . . . Accurate, fascinating, and important."--Julian Jaynes, author of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Annotation

Focuses on the ways in which 19th century French neurologists thought behavior was controlled from specific spots in the brain.

Library Journal

This work is an example of conceptual history at its best. The author concentrates on the neurological sciences in the period 1860-1900, principally in France and other European countries. Theories of cognition have roots in Cartesian philosophy, and Harrington carefully prepares the reader for developments in the latter half of the 19th century, when philosophical concepts and scientific rigor were combined. The many significant developments of this period include Broca's localization of function in the brain, and the writings of Charcot and Freud. A final chapter follows through to the present. Serious students in the history of medicine and science will delight in this book. Frances Groen, McGill Univ. Lib., Montreal