Brain, Vol. 126, No. 2, 508-511,
February 2003
© 2003 Guarantors of Brain
doi: 10.1093/brain/awg024
Book Review |
A DICTIONARY OF NEUROLOGICAL SIGNS
Walsgrave Hospital, Coventry, UK
A DICTIONARY OF NEUROLOGICAL SIGNS
By A. J. Larner
2001. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers
Price £19. ISBN 140200043X.
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
In the early 1960s a live BBC television broadcast on Parkinson’s disease showed the moment of cessation of tremor in a patient undergoing stereotactic surgery. The importance of the physical sign not only in diagnosis but also, together with knowledge of anatomy, in understanding pathophysiology was made clear and a future addiction to physical signs primed in at least one viewer. Subsequent medical school training saw exhaustive exposure. The professorial medical ward round would start in the post mortem room at 1:30 pm, subsequently progressing to the ward, symptoms and signs continuing to be dissected until the medical school bar opened at 6:00 pm. A missed opportunity to examine a patient led to professorial admonishment, permanently recorded in the medical school journal, that ‘time tide, and signs in the chest wait for no man’ but encouragement led to the rare opportunity to observe a patient in circulatory failure, alternately blue,