Preface This is the second of two volumes titled Literature, Neurology, and Neuroscience. These Progress in Brain Research volumes were preceded by two other edited volumes, The Fine Arts, Neurology and Neuroscience (parts I and II), and will be followed (in 2015) by two volumes dealing with Music, Neurology and Neuroscience. In its companion (part I) piece on literature, subtitled Historical and Literary Connections, we examined a number of topics, ranging from how new developments in neuroscience were conveyed or reflected in literature to how great writers incorporated the latest theories of nerves and brain into their short stories, novels, and poetry. Our authors also covered other overlooked neuroscience connections in literature, including what Lord Byron’s physician had previously written about somnambulism, Peter Mark Roget’s forays into the neurosciences prior to completing his eponymic Thesaurus, and how Bram Stoker turned to his brother, a neurosurgeon, for the latest neuroscientific developments to incorporate into his masterpiece, Dracula. Some chapters also examined neuroaesthetics. We nevertheless reserved the fascinating subject of disorders of the brain and “mind” in literature for special treatment in the current volume, which has Neurological and Psychiatric Disorders as its subtitle. This volume is divided into two parts. The first looks at how great writers have depicted neurological and psychiatric disorders in literature, as well their sources, which were sometimes personal, for the moving and memorable verbal images they provided. Here, as can be imagined, it was only possible to sample from a great number of authors and neurological and psychiatric disorders. Nevertheless, we believe that this sampling of what can be found in highly-regarded literature will not only be informative, but will stimulate readers to think about, and perhaps write about, other authors, other medical conditions, and other cultures, thereby adding to this exciting but overlooked and outlying branch of neuroscience—one that gleans medical information and its transmission from literature. Thus, in the first section of this volume, the reader will be introduced to neurological disorders in William Shakespeare’s plays, to how neurologist Jean Martin Charcot and his work on hysteria has been portrayed in literature, and to Russian writers and their deeply held beliefs about the cold, wearing hats, and one’s susceptibility to meningitis. Other subjects examined include the “locked-in syndrome,” in which the afflicted (most notably Monsieur Noirtier de Villefort in Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo) can only communicate with their eyes, Baron Munchhausen’s noninvolvement with the two syndromes now bearing his name, and the forms of madness encountered in various famous French fin-de-sie`cle pieces of fiction. The second section of this volume focuses on how therapies and treatments for neurological and psychiatric disorders have been presented to the public by novelists, biographers, and even newspaper and magazine reporters. These chapters show of how ancient “heroic” therapies, including leeching and other forms of bloodletting,

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as well as later vibratory treatments, bodily suspensions, and other faddish therapies and experimental trials were depicted and questioned, most notably in the French literature during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Two twentieth-century treatments are also examined. One is frontal lobotomies and lobectomies, and the other is electroconvulsive shock, both initially looked upon as panaceas for certain psychiatric conditions, such as depression. The authors of these two chapters show that these interventions had great promise but also risks, a dark side that at least early on was not always accurately or even truthfully presented to the laity by writers, including well-meaning journalists, in certain cultures. Hence, this volume, like its companion piece and the two preceding it, brings the basic and applied neurosciences and the arts together in interesting ways. With its focus on neurological and psychiatric disorders, this volume will continue to show how science, medicine, and the arts can come together—not only presenting some common disorders and rather rare disorders to the laity, but by informing ordinary people of the latest developments, thereby influencing individual perceptions and societal opinions, sometimes positively and sometimes in decidedly more negative ways. Stanley Finger Franc¸ois Boller Anne Stiles

Recommended Additional Readings Bogousslavsky, J., Boller, F., 2005. Neurological Disorders in Famous Artists. Karger, Basel. Bogousslavsky, J., Dieguez, S., 2013. Literary Medicine: Brain Disease, Patients and Doctors in Novels, Theatre, and Film. Karger, Basel. Bogousslavsky, J., Hennerici, M.G., 2007. Neurological Disorders in Famous Artists—Part 2. Karger, Basel. Bogousslavsky, J., Hennerici, M.G., Ba¨zner, H., Bassetti, C., 2010. Neurological Disorders in Famous Artists—Part 3. Karger, Basel. Rose, F.C. (Ed.), 2004. Neurology of the Arts. Imperial College Press, London.

Literature, neurology, and neuroscience: neurological and psychiatric disorders. Preface.

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