How the Brain Lost Its Mind

This book offers a captivating tale of how the increasing knowledge of one disease, syphilis, created the foundations to understanding that the brain and mind are one and the same. The authors narrate the stories of patients whose “hysteria” (today referred to as functional neurological disorder) were traced to degenerative brain lesions that only belatedly were understood to be complications caused by remote infections with the bacterium Treponema pallidum. Several chapters follow the story of the important characters depicted by André Brouillet in the Une leçon clinique à la Salpêtrière (A Clinical Lesson at the Salpêtrière), one of the most… show more.