This project analyzes the history of neurology in the United States (with some attention to Canada) between 1863 and 1945, based largely on research in archival and manuscript collections, along with an examination of a wide range of published sources (e.g., autobiographical memoirs, addresses, scientific papers, clinical reports, textbooks, institutional histories). Rather than considering neurology mainly as an abstract body of knowledge, it focuses on the practice of neurology: the activities of neurologists, especially as they interacted with patients and medical colleagues. The project does not attempt to be encyclopedic or comprehensive. Instead, selected examples of particular individuals, organizations, and institutions are explored in detail to illustrate major trends and developments and to explicate the main themes of the book. Among these themes are: (1) how the practice of neurology changed as its center shifted from the solo practice of medicine to the university department and research institute; (2) how boundaries were established between neurology and psychiatry, neurosurgery, and internal medicine, and what this suggests about the process of specialization in medicine; and (3) changing views of the relation between the science and the practice of medicine. The only existing history of American neurology, by Russell N. DeJong (1982), is a highly derivative chronicle of personalities and institutions that attempts little analysis or interpretation. The scholarly monograph that is to result from this project will thus be a unique contribution to the literature of the history of medicine. This project is significant because it will be one of the first case studies of a clinical specialty that addresses important issues in the development and institutionalization of scientific knowledge in a particular social context. It will complement a growing body of work on the history of psychiatry. It will produce a narrative history of neurology in America that displays fundamental interconnections among experimental, philosophical, clinical, and social aspects of the specialty as they developed over the period of the study. It will address an audience beyond historians of medicine, mainly philosophers and neuroscientists, because it will also provide a historical perspective on issues in the philosophy of the neurosciences which have remained problematic to the present: for example, (1) the potential significance of neuroscience in solving the """"""""mind-body problem,"""""""" and (2) problems of reductionism in twentieth century science. An outline of the book, with chapter summaries, is included in this proposal.
