Brain, Vol. 127, No. 9, 2144-2147,
September 2004
© 2004 Guarantors of Brain
doi: 10.1093/brain/awh271
Book review |
MYELIN BIOLOGY AND ITS DISORDERS: TWO-VOLUME SET
Edited by Robert A. Lazzarini 2004. San Diego: Elsevier Academic Press Price £340.00. ISBN 0-12-439510-4
University of Bristol Institute of Clinical Neurosciences, Department of Neurology, Frenchay Hospital, Bristol, UK
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
‘The third element’
It is the title of this fine book that stirs the blood. It is neither a dusty dry tome on myelin, nor a clinicians' handbook on myelin diseases: it bestrides science and medicine and proclaims that these must not be divorced, but remain joined together in sickness and in health.
There is surely no other area in medical neuroscience—arguably in all of clinical science—where science and medicine have been so closely intertwined. Why is this? How does the biology of the neural cell filter through to, and so dictate myelin order and disorder? It is not such a tortuous path to the answer.
Originally, the brain was held to contain two cell types—neurons, whose function Cajal first proposed, and neuroglia, originally described by Virchow in the mid 19th century. He attributed to the latter, two activities: the mechanical support of nerve cells and the