The art of medicine John Hughlings Jackson: bridging theory and clinical observation

摘要

John Hughlings Jackson, who is regarded by many as the father of British neurology, published his Croonian lectures on the evolution and dissolution of the nervous system in The Lancet in 1884 His lectures picked up the revolutionary insights of Charles Darwin and the extension of those ideas to human mental and moral life by Herbert Spencer, and used that framework to analyse neurological and psychiatric disorders seen in late 19th-century clinical life. They are worth revisiting because of the insight they give into a neurologist who blended profound theoretical understanding with astute clinical observation.