Simon Shorvon

Defining neurological disease is less objective than often assumed. Simon Shorvon considers how confusion between symptoms and disease, shifting criteria, unstable classifications, and complex aetiology can undermine the medical model, while labels can have profound social and personal implications the model tends to ignore.

Leon Pierce Clark (1870-1933) was a prominent American neurologist and psychiatrist and an enigmatic figure. He made enduring contributions to status epilepticus and to epilepsy. In the 1910s and 1920s, his chief focus was on the psychological mechanisms of epilepsy and on the personality of those with idiopathic epilepsy which he interpreted from a psychoanalytical perspective. He also described the epileptic voice sign, wrote psychobiographies of among others Abraham Lincoln and Napoleon Bonaparte, and published a book of poetry. He held many important positions in American professional societies and yet was embroiled in controversy.