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Editorial
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In ‘Fashion and cult in neuroscience—the case of hysteria’, Simon Shorvon reviews The Story of Blanche and Marie (by Per Olav Enquist), Freud's Wizard (by Brenda Maddox) and Human Traces (by Sebastian Faulks), illustrating why ‘the scientist as stone mason, chipping away at the rock of ignorance and uncovering the glorious forms of reason’ is an awkward metaphor given that ‘the march of science has an erratic course. and ... a trajectory influenced continuously by personality cult and by public fashion’ (p. 3342). The dominant personality appearing centre-stage or providing a sub-text to both novels and the one biography under review is Jean-Martin Charcot. Professor Shorvon reveals the voyeuristic Parisian neuroscience theatre in which, as ‘circus ringmaster’, Charcot and his troupe mixed art, technology and clinical description ... ‘with lurid clinical descriptions of the subjects’ sexual fantasies (délire erotique) and photographs of women and girls in
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