Download or read book Charcot s Bad Idea written by Simon Overton and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2009-06-07 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book charts the ways in which the ideas of a 19th Century neurologist became enshrined in the thinking of modern neuropsychiatry. It looks at how the diagnosis of hysteria and conversion disorder was revitalised by a group of like-minded physicians under the terms of "functional weakness" and "functional neurological deficit" in order to "develop constructive ways of talking with patients". Overton claims this approach has fundamentally failed and the often hilarious jibes he makes at some sectors of the medical profession only highlight further the need for doctors to listen to their patients. "Deserves to be part of the literary canon"- Angela Kennedy

Download or read book Invention of Hysteria written by Georges Didi-Huberman and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2004-09-17 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first English-language publication of a classic French book on the relationship between the development of photography and of the medical category of hysteria. In this classic of French cultural studies, Georges Didi-Huberman traces the intimate and reciprocal relationship between the disciplines of psychiatry and photography in the late nineteenth century. Focusing on the immense photographic output of the Salpetriere hospital, the notorious Parisian asylum for insane and incurable women, Didi-Huberman shows the crucial role played by photography in the invention of the category of hysteria. Under the direction of the medical teacher and clinician Jean-Martin Charcot, the inmates of Salpetriere identified as hysterics were methodically photographed, providing skeptical colleagues with visual proof of hysteria's specific form. These images, many of which appear in this book, provided the materials for the multivolume album Iconographie photographique de la Salpetriere. As Didi-Huberman shows, these photographs were far from simply objective documentation. The subjects were required to portray their hysterical "type"—they performed their own hysteria. Bribed by the special status they enjoyed in the purgatory of experimentation and threatened with transfer back to the inferno of the incurables, the women patiently posed for the photographs and submitted to presentations of hysterical attacks before the crowds that gathered for Charcot's "Tuesday Lectures." Charcot did not stop at voyeuristic observation. Through techniques such as hypnosis, electroshock therapy, and genital manipulation, he instigated the hysterical symptoms in his patients, eventually giving rise to hatred and resistance on their part. Didi-Huberman follows this path from complicity to antipathy in one of Charcot's favorite "cases," that of Augustine, whose image crops up again and again in the Iconographie. Augustine's virtuosic performance of hysteria ultimately became one of self-sacrifice, seen in pictures of ecstasy, crucifixion, and silent cries.

Download or read book Poor Things written by Alasdair Gray and published by Dalkey Archive Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of Alasdair Gray's most brilliant creations, Poor Things is a postmodern revision of Frankenstein that replaces the traditional monster with Bella Baxter--a beautiful young erotomaniac brought back to life with the brain of an infant. Godwin Baxter's scientific ambition to create the perfect companion is realized when he finds the drowned body of Bella, but his dream is thwarted by Dr. Archibald McCandless's jealous love for Baxter's creation.The hilarious tale of love and scandal that ensues would be "the whole story" in the hands of a lesser author (which in fact it is, for this account is actually written by Dr. McCandless). For Gray, though, this is only half the story, after which Bella (a.k.a. Victoria McCandless) has her own say in the matter.Satirizing the classic Victorian novel, Poor Things is a hilarious political allegory and a thought-provoking duel between the desires of men and the independence of women, from one of Scotland's most accomplished authors.

Download or read book Management of Diabetic Foot Complications written by Clifford P. Shearman and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-02-04 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ​Public and political concern about the increasing prevalence of diabetes has prompted major concern about treatment of patients with the condition. Foot complications are some of the commonest causes of hospitalisation of people with diabetes and if not treated well often lead to amputation. There is evidence that 85% of these amputations can be prevented by better understanding of the problem and by multi-disciplinary teams working more effectively together. This has been recognised and NICE have recently published guidelines on diabetic foot complications as have Diabetes UK and NHS Diabetes. These have been successful in raising awareness of the problem but the local multi-disciplinary teams need clear practical advice on how to manage the foot in diabetes and deliver high quality care. With the current interest in improving outcomes for patients with foot complications this is an ideal time to make a practical evidence-based handbook available. This book will provide clear practical guidelines on how to manage all aspects of the foot in diabetes as well as an in-depth analysis of the most recent evidence. The book will be based on care pathways with algorithms for each section so it would be of practical value in any clinic in primary or secondary care. It will appeal to a wide range of health care professionals treating people with diabetes: vascular surgeons and trainees, orthopaedic surgeons, diabetes specialist nurses, podiatrists and tissue viability nurses.​

Download or read book The Myth of Mental Illness written by Thomas S. Szasz and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-07-12 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The landmark book that argued that psychiatry consistently expands its definition of mental illness to impose its authority over moral and cultural conflict.” — New York Times The 50th anniversary edition of the most influential critique of psychiatry every written, with a new preface on the age of Prozac and Ritalin and the rise of designer drugs, plus two bonus essays. Thomas Szasz's classic book revolutionized thinking about the nature of the psychiatric profession and the moral implications of its practices. By diagnosing unwanted behavior as mental illness, psychiatrists, Szasz argues, absolve individuals of responsibility for their actions and instead blame their alleged illness. He also critiques Freudian psychology as a pseudoscience and warns against the dangerous overreach of psychiatry into all aspects of modern life.

Download or read book Charcot written by Christopher G. Goetz and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By then he had already published widely and had assembled a team of research specialists and students who approached the study of the nervous system through the celebrated methode anatomo-clinique that correlated specific neurological signs with discrete lesions in the central nervous system. Pushing beyond the bounds of anatomical study, Charcot went on to study hysteria, attracting both scientific and social notoriety.

Download or read book Gilded Youth written by Kate Cambor and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-08-03 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Gilded Youth, Kate Cambor paints a portrait of a generation lost in upheaval. While France weathered social unrest, violent crime, the birth of modern psychology, and the dawn of World War I, these three young adults (Leon Daudet, Jean-Baptiste Charcot, and Jeanne Hugo) experienced the disorientation of a generation forced to discover that the faith in science and progress that had sustained their fathers had failed them. --from publisher description

Download or read book Human Traces written by Sebastian Faulks and published by Random House. This book was released on 2006-09-12 with total page 669 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sixteen-year-old Jacques Rebière is living a humble life in rural France, studying butterflies and frogs by candlelight in his bedroom. Across the Channel, in England, the playful Thomas Midwinter, also sixteen, is enjoying a life of ease-and is resigned to follow his father's wishes and pursue a career in medicine. A fateful seaside meeting four years later sets the two young men on a profound course of friendship and discovery; they will become pioneers in the burgeoning field of psychiatry. But when a female patient at the doctors' Austrian sanatorium becomes dangerously ill, the two men's conflicting diagnosis threatens to divide them--and to undermine all their professional achievements. From the bestselling author of Birdsong comes this masterful novel that ventures to answer challenging questions of consciousness and science, and what it means to be human.

Download or read book How the Brain Lost Its Mind written by Allan H. Ropper and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A noted neurologist challenges the widespread misunderstanding of brain disease and mental illness. How the Brain Lost Its Mind tells the rich and compelling story of two confounding ailments, syphilis and hysteria, and the extraordinary efforts to confront their effects on mental life. How does the mind work? Where does madness lie, in the brain or in the mind? How should it be treated? Throughout the nineteenth century, syphilis--a disease of mad poets, musicians, and artists--swept through the highest and lowest rungs of European society like a plague. Known as "the Great Imitator," it could produce almost any form of mental or physical illness, and it would bring down a host of famous and infamous characters--among them Guy de Maupassant, Vincent van Gogh, the Marquis de Sade, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Al Capone. It was the first truly psychiatric disease and it filled asylums to overflowing. At the same time, an outbreak of bizarre behaviors resembling epilepsy, but with no identifiable source in the body, strained the diagnostic skills of the great neurologists. It was referred to as hysteria. For more than a century, neurosyphilis stood out as the archetype of a brain-based mental illness, fully understood but largely forgotten, and today far from gone. Hysteria, under many different names, remains unexplained and epidemic. These two conditions stand at opposite poles of the current debate over the role of the brain in mental illness. Hysteria led Freud to insert sex into psychology. Neurosyphilis led to the proliferation of mental institutions. The problem of managing the inmates led to the abuse of lobotomy and electroshock therapy, and ultimately the overuse of psychotropic drugs. Today we know that syphilitic madness was a destructive disease of the brain while hysteria and, more broadly, many varieties of mental illness reside solely in the mind. Or do they? Afflictions once written off as "hysterical" continue to elude explanation. Addiction, alcoholism, autism, ADHD, Tourette syndrome, depression, and sociopathy, though regarded as brain-based, have not been proven to be so. In these pages, the authors raise a host of philosophical and practical questions. What is the difference between a sick mind and a sick brain? If we understood everything about the brain, would we understand ourselves? By delving into an overlooked history, this book shows how neuroscience and brain scans alone cannot account for a robust mental life, or a deeply disturbed one.

Download or read book Mad Travelers written by Ian Hacking and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reflections on the Reality of transient mental illnessThis text uses the case of Albert Dadas, the first diagnosed "mad traveller", to weigh the legitimacy of cultural versus physical symptoms in the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders. The author argues that psychological symptoms find niches where transient illnesses flourish.

Download or read book Racial Castration written by David L. Eng and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2001-03-20 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVA psychoanalytic study that argues for the centrality of sexuality in the construction of Asian-American identity, and of racial identity in general./div

Download or read book Nineteenth Century Opera and the Scientific Imagination written by David Trippett and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-22 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the rich and varied interactions between nineteenth-century science and the world of opera for the first time.

Download or read book Freud written by Richard Webster and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This book was released on 2011-09-14 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Popular Great Philosopher's Series Richard Webster expert on Freud A critical reassessment of one of the most controversial philosophers of the last century. Few figures have had so decisive and fundamental an influence on the course of modern cultural history as Sigmund Freud. Yet few figures also have inspired such intense controversy and continued debate. The criticisms directed against his ideas have tended to become better informed with the passing of time. With almost a hundred years of Freud scholarship to draw on, it is now possible, perhaps for the first time, to offer a considered and balanced judgement on the value both of Freud's thought and of the movement he founded. It is this which Richard Webster has set out to do in a book which provides both a lucid introduction to Freud's theories and a striking account of why it is that Freud is still widely regarded as the most important of all modern thinkers.

Download or read book Georges Gilles de la Tourette written by Olivier Walusinski and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This biography is the first comprehensive volume to delve into the life, scholarship, writing, and hobbies of the famed doctor, for whom Tourette's Syndrome is named. In Part One, we learn Georges' family history, follow his schooling and mentorship under Charcot, travel to the World's Fair of 1900, and evade an attempted assassination, all before succumbing to death by syphilis. Part Two provides an in-depth analysis of his neurological and psychiatric works, notably the eponymous neurological disorder that will forever remain "Tourette's Syndrome." Part Three looks at the lighter side of Georges, inspecting his favorite past-times as poet, historian, and art critic. Part Four brings an extensive bibliography of Georges' complete body of work.

Download or read book Why Freud was Wrong written by Richard Webster and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 673 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first complete and coherent account of Freud's life and work to be written from a consistently sceptical point of view. Meticulously researched and powerfully argued, the book is a devastating portrait of the interpreter of dreams.

Download or read book Fiction and Physicians written by Stephen McWilliams and published by The Liffey Press. This book was released on 2012-10-04 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Keats, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, François Rabelais, William Somerset Maugham . . . All were writers of fiction but, more surprisingly, all were also medical doctors. Anton Chekhov, A.J. Cronin, Oliver St John Gogarty, Michael Crichton . . . even Nostradamus The world has seen literally dozens of them - famous writers who wielded a stethoscope as skilfully as they did a pen. So, what do literature and medicine have in common? Is there something about the singular experience of being a doctor that results in a compelling desire for communication, or indeed catharsis? In addition, we have seen many non-medical writers who have made fictional physicians their principal protagonists, heroes and villains alike, so compellingly vivid they keep the pages turning: Dr Jekyll, Doctor Zhivago, Hannibal Lecter, Doc Daneeka, Dick Diver . . . And of course there are numerous examples of writers who have deftly described fictional patients struck down by illness in the key twist of a plot: Ian McEwan, Albert Camus, Sebastian Faulks, Gabriel García Márquez, Thomas Mann . . . In this fascinating and unique book, psychiatrist Stephen McWilliams considers the above and many more in his exploration of the links between literature and medicine. With hundreds of examples, Fiction and Physicians provides an entertaining and absorbing look at how the world of medicine has inspired centuries of Irish, European and American literature. ‘Fiction & Physicians is filled with doctors, real and imagined, of every conceivable hue: the good, the bad, the deeply misguided. Stephen McWilliams, erudite and entertaining, takes us on an exotic journey into the imaginations of doctors and doctors of the imagination. As often as not, truth seems like fiction, and fiction seems like truth. . . 'Fiction & Physicians is essential reading for doctors, patients, and everyone who ever gazed in puzzlement at the medical profession and wondered: What on earth goes on in their heads?’ - Brendan Kelly, consultant psychiatrist, writer and Senior Lecturer in Psychiatry, University College Dublin ‘A fascinating insight into the inner world of doctors in literature. 'Inspiring, creative and meticulously researched, Fiction & Physicians delves deeply into the question of why doctors write.’ - Juliet Bressan, resident doctor on TV3’s Ireland AM and author of Snow White Turtle Doves and Entanglement ‘Stephen McWilliams’s incisive perspective is a revelation in itself. A medical writer of very great talent is born.’ -Maurice Gueret, Sunday Independent ‘This beautifully written and wonderfully engaging book carries us behind the scenes into the lives and work of writers such as John Keats, Chekhov, Arthur Conan Doyle and R.D. Laing who have given us some of our most precious insights about ourselves, based on their experience of medicine. Reading this book I found myself being guided by the author into an easy intimacy with these and many other writers that was both a pleasurable and revealing encounter.’ - Tony Bates, clinical psychologist, Irish Times columnist and author of Coming through Depression

Download or read book The Art of Shrinking Heads written by Dany-Robert Dufour and published by Polity. This book was released on 2008 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the hell of the Nazis and the terror of Communism, it is possible that a new catastrophe has appeared on the horizon: this time it is neoliberalism that wants to create its own 'new man'. Dufour shows that radical transformation of the subject brought about by neoliberalism contains a new kind of violence.