The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons by Sam Kean

Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens.

Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. How else would early surgeons learn about this complexity but by dissecting the brain itself? Entertaining and quotable, Kean’s writing is sharp, and each individual story brings the history of neuroscience to life.Ĭompulsively readable, wicked scientific fun.Ī Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence. For example, facts emerged about how the left and right hemispheres complement each other, how language follows different neural circuits depending on if it’s spoken or read (interestingly, many people recovering language skills after an injury are able to sing song lyrics but not speak in regular conversation), and how memory, sense perception and facial recognition are embedded deep in the astonishingly complex circuitry of the brain. Major discoveries about how the brain works were borne from inspecting damaged brains in the context of the injured person’s symptoms. Those who survived the wounds or seizures were often irrevocably changed as new personality traits emerged, giving doctors clues about how the brain altered itself in a struggle to function despite trauma. How is it that a man can survive a spike through his skull, and yet his peer drops dead after a seemingly minor bump? In tale after tale, best-selling author Kean ( The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code, 2012, etc.) provides a fascinating, and at times gloriously gory, look at how early efforts in neurosurgery were essentially a medical guessing game. Neurosurgery has come a long way since the 16th century, and this series of historical anecdotes traces the many people who, often by suffering horrific injuries, allowed the study and treatment of brain trauma to evolve and become the sophisticated field it is today.įor centuries, brain injuries have been documented and analyzed as doctors attempted to comprehend how the brain functions.

The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons by Sam Kean