Editorial

摘要

To a neurologist, sensory history means documenting the durationnand distribution of numbness and pins and needles and supple-nmenting the story with several hours painstaking quantification ofnlight touch using von Frey hairs; but for historians, sensory historynis an emerging discipline based on the premise that human per-nception is much conditioned by the contexts and social values ofnthe times in which the events of interest actually occurred. Thesenformulations raise the usual canard of ‘what is medical history?’nPhysicians interested in the history of their subject are usuallyncaricatured as imposing the knowledge and constraints of theirnown times on the historical record; historians are dubbed withnbeing too little concerned with fact and physiology, merelynseeing how things work as a function of the cultural perspectivesnof previous ages. It follows that—for sensory historians—sight