Brain Vol. 128 No. 1 © Guarantors of Brain 2005; all rights reserved
Book review |
A HISTORY OF NERVE FUNCTIONS: FROM ANIMAL SPIRITS TO MOLECULAR MECHANISMS
Sidney Ochs
2004. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Price £65.00.
ISBN 052124742X
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Impulses good and bad
Two quite different cases seen when I was a medical student raised similar questions, and have provided points of reference for much of the work with which I have been involved over the past 45 years. The initial was in 1953 and was the first patient I saw with multiple sclerosis. I was struck by the degree of recovery possible from even a severe relapse. The second, seen in 1957, was a youth who had been accidentally shot in the thigh (a well known hazard of the antipodean shooting season). He was paralysed below the knee. However, after about a week, to the surprise of all, movement began to return at the ankle. It is obvious to us now that the deficits in these two patients and their recoveries must have been mediated by changes in the electrical properties of axons traversing the lesions. But this explanation was not always
Royal College of Physicians, London NW1 4LE