HOW THE BRAIN LOST ITS MIND

Sub-titled 'Sex, Hysteria and the Riddle of Mental Illness', the book asks where should neurology and psychiatry converge to explore not just the brain, but the nature of the human psyche? In 1882, Jean-Martin Charcot was the premier physician in Paris where many of his patients had neurosyphilis - the advanced form of syphilis which was causing an overflow of patients in Europe's asylums. A sexually transmitted disease, it was known as the 'great imitator' since its symptoms resembled those of almost any biological disease or mental illness. Charcot brought mesmerism or hypnotism into his clinic in favour of the far sexier and theatrical treatment of female 'hysterics'. The disease of mad poets, musicians and artists swept through the highest and lowest rungs of European society like a plague, demonstrated in an outbreak of bizarre behaviours resembling epilepsy, but with no identifiable source in the body and it strained the diagnostic skills of the great neurologists. Today we know that syphilitic madness was a destructive disease of the brain, but what is the difference between the brain and the mind? What does it mean to have an illness that affects one and not the other? Is madness physical or intangible? The book asks the deepest questions about the very nature of who we are. A rollicking ride, patient by patient, through the two conditions of neurosyphilis and hysteria. 242pp, paperback.