Brain 2005 128(6):1466-1468; doi:10.1093/brain/awh530
© The Author (2005). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oupjournals.org
MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS: The history of a disease
By T. Jock Murray
2005. New York: Demos.
Price £29.95
ISBN 1-888799-80-3
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
‘Once on this familiar spot of ground’
What means, and to what end does one study history?
On learning that a book of 580
pages is now published dealing exclusively with historical aspects
of multiple sclerosis, busy clinicians caring for affected individuals
and researchers interested in the disease as a problem in clinical
science might reasonably ask whether it is worthwhile to study
historical aspects in such detail, and at such length, in any
medical field, let alone one in which fact and fiction are so
inextricably intermingled and the literature so liberally decorated
with decoys and distractions on the path to discovery. On May
26, 1789, Friedrich Schiller gave his inaugural lecture as a
Privatdozent at the University of Jena, entitled: ‘What
means and to what end does one study universal history?’
(Schiller, 1989
). Two hundred years after the death of this
great poet, playwright and philosopher—sometimes called
the inventor of German idealism—he is still commemorated
and mourned
. . . [Full Text of this Article]
Jürg Kesselring
Valens, Switzerland
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