Neurobiographies: writing lives in the history of neurology and the neurosciences.
This essay surveys the present state of biographical writing in the history of neurology and neuroscience. Individual lives play a significant role in practitioner-historians' narratives, whereas academic historians tend to be more nonindividualistic and a-biographical. Autobiographies by neurologists and neuroscientists, and particularly autobiographical collections, are problematic as an historical genre. Neurobiographies proper are published with several aims in mind: some are written as literary entertainment, others as contributions to a cultural and social history of the neurosciences. Eulogy, panegyrics and commemoration play a great role in neurobiographical writing. Some biographies, finally, are written to provide role-models for young neuroscientists, thus reviving the classical, Plutarchian biographical tradition. Finally, a recent cooperative biography of Charcot is mentioned as an example of how the biographical genre can help overcome the alleged dichotomy between the historiographies of practitioner-historians and academic historians.
Söderqvist
Thomas
T
Department of History of Medicine, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Bredgade 62, DK-1260 Copenhagen, Denmark. t.soderqvist@pubhealth.ku.dk
D001680:Biographies as Topic; D049670:History, 17th Century; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D009462:Neurology / Q000266:history*; D009488:Neurosciences / Q000266:history*