Anne Stiles

Popular fiction and brain science in the late nineteenth century

Introduction: cerebral localization and the late Victorian Gothic romance Part I. Reactionaries: 1. Robert Louis Stevensons Jekyll and Hyde and the double brain 2. Bram Stokers Dracula and cerebral automatism Part II. Materialists: 3. Photographic memory in the works of Grant Allen Part III. Visionaries: 4. H. G. Wells and the evolution of the mad scientist 5. Marie Corelli and the neuron Epilogue Looking forward.

Neurology and literature, 1860-1920

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction A.Stiles PART I: CATALYSTS Howled Out of the Country: Wilkie Collins and H.G. Wells Retry David Ferrier L.Otis Our Lady of Darkness: Decadent Arts and the Magnetic Sleep of Magdeleine G. D.LaCoss PART II: DIAGNOSTIC CATEGORIES How Do I Look? Dysmorphophobia and Obsession at the Fin de Siecle A.Mangham Doctor Zay and Dr. Mitchell: Elizabeth Stuart Phelpss Feminist Response to Mainstream Neurology K.Swenson PART III: SEX AND THE BRAIN Trauma and Sexual Inversion, circa 1885: Dr Holmess A Mortal Antipathy and Maladies of Representation R.Knoper Singing the Body Electric: Nervous Music and Sexuality in Fin-de-Siecle Literature J.Kennaway PART IV: THE TRAUMATIZED BRAIN Emergent Theories of Victorian Mind Shock: From War and Railway Accident to Nerves, Electricity and Emotion J.Matus Medical and Literary Discourses of Trauma in the Age of the American Civil War M.Micale Works Cited Index

Cerebral Automatism, the Brain, and the Soul in Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Neither literary critics nor historians of science have acknowledged the extent to which Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) is indebted to late-Victorian neurologists, particularly David Ferrier, John Burdon-Sanderson, Thomas Huxley, and William Carpenter. Stoker came from a family of distinguished Irish physicians and obtained an M.A. in mathematics from Trinity College, Dublin. His personal library contained volumes on physiology, and his composition notes for Dracula include typewritten pages on somnambulism, trance states, and cranial injuries. Stoker used his knowledge of neurology extensively in Dracula. The automatic behaviors practiced by Dracula and his vampiric minions, such as somnambulism and hypnotic trance states, reflect theories about reflex action postulated by Ferrier and other physiologists. These scientists traced such automatic behaviors to the brain stem and suggested that human behavior was “determined” through the reflex action of the body and brain—a position that threatened to undermine entrenched beliefs in free will and the immortal soul. I suggest that Stoker’s vampire protagonist dramatizes the pervasive late-nineteenth-century fear that human beings are soulless machines motivated solely by physiological factors.

Somnambulism and Trance States in the Works of John William Polidori, Author of The Vampyre

English physician John William Polidori (1795–1821) is today best known as the author of The Vampyre (1819) and as the traveling companion of Lord Byron. Less appreciated is Polidori’s interest in somnambulism and trance states, the subjects of his 1815 medical thesis at the University of Edinburgh. Until now, this little‐known document existed only in the original Latin. This essay draws upon a new English translation of the thesis in order to demonstrate how Polidori’s medical writing responded to the influences of mesmerism and phrenology, while anticipating mid‐Victorian theories of “unconscious cerebration” developed by William Benjamin Carpenter and Thomas Laycock. Polidori’s interest in somnambulism carried over into his fiction. Lord Ruthven, the villain of The Vampyre, experiences trance‐like states and sensory lapses peculiar to somnambulists. These behaviors evoke Romantic‐era medical controversies surrounding the activity of the brain during sleep, as well as the potential conflict between higher faculties like the will or the soul and automatic brain functions that could be carried out without conscious awareness. By foregrounding such concerns, The Vampyre set the stage for the somnambulistic, hypnotic vampire villains of tales like Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897).

A New Look at Polidori

Critics of the works of John William Polidori, the author of The Vampyre (1819), have often glossed over the author’s background as a physician and overlooked the medical references in his fiction. These oversights are understandable in light of the inaccessibility of Polidori’s 1815 Latin medical thesis on somnambulism. Here the authors present the first published, full‐length English translation of Polidori’s thesis, entitled “Inaugural Medical Dissertation Concerning Certain Aspects of the Disease Called Oneirodynia.” This document contains two case studies of sleepwalkers along with reflections on central medical controversies of the Romantic era, such as the activity of the mind during sleep. In the companion essay that accompanies this translation, the authors examine how Polidori’s interest in somnambulism resurfaced in his fiction, particularly the trance‐like behaviors of his vampire villain, Lord Ruthven.

Lord Byron's physician: John William Polidori on somnambulism.

John William Polidori (1795-1821) was the Edinburgh-trained physician hired by Lord Byron to accompany him to Switzerland, where he participated in the story-telling event proposed by Byron that led, with Polidoris help, to Mary Shelleys Frankenstein. Although those interested in English literature might also remember Polidori as the author of The Vampyre, one of the first extended works of fiction about vampires, his earlier interest in somnambulism and trance states is only beginning to be appreciated. Even more than students of Romantic literature, historians of science and medicine seem little aware of what Polidori had written about oneirodynia, a synonym for somnambulism, and how his thoughts from 1815 about such activities reflected the changing medical zeitgeist at this time. This chapter examines Polidoris medical thesis in a neuroscience context and compares what he wrote to the writings of several other physicians who were fascinated by nocturnal wanderings, their causes, their manifestations, and their possible treatments.

Literature, neurology, and neuroscience: neurological and psychiatric disorders. Preface.

This is an eclectic book, with each chapter written by different authors and the subject of each chapter selected seemingly idiosyncratically. The first nine chapters focus on literary portrayals of neurologic and psychiatric disorders, and the last three are devoted to how literature and the media depict treatments for neurologic and psychiatric conditions. Although the subject matter goes in many directions, some of them intense, the editors tie the chapters together graphically and make the text more accessible by breaking it up into short sections and by framing the literary quotations inside boxes so they stand out from the rest of the page. As part of Elsevier’s extensive Progress in Brain Research series, this book is the second volume of two on literature and neurology, both published in 2013. The series published two volumes on art in 2013, and two on music and neurology in 2015. Because all the chapters are so individual, I will evaluate them one by one. In the opening chapter, Maurizio Paciaroni and Julien Bogousslavsky discuss how William Shakespeare writes about neurologic disorders in his plays. This is an enticing subject for any literary-minded neurologist, and for me the most enjoyable chapter of the book. We know that the Bard was a keen observer of human behavior, including the symptoms of neurologic diseases. He describes most of the common neurologic conditions, including Parkinson disease, epilepsy, sleep disorders (insomnia and sleep apnea), dementia, headache, Huntington disease, prion diseases, and paralysis. Othello had not only seizurelike episodes, but also madness, and the authors wonder whether he might have had neurosyphilis. Julius Caesar had more obvious epilepsy: “He fell down in the marketplace, and foamed at the mouth, and was speechless.” As to sleep disorders, there is probably no better exemplar of sleepwalking and sleeptalking than Lady Macbeth, and no better characterization of sleep apnea than Falstaff’s: “Fast asleep behind the arras, and snorting like a horse.” “Hark, how hard he fetches breath.” The dementia of King Lear should be required reading for any student of neurodegenerative disorders. As You Like It has the famous quote about aging and dementia: “Last scene of all, that ends this strange eventful history, is second childishness and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” The chapter’s subsection on “Paralysis” seems to refer to paralysis from stroke. I was surprised that Shakespeare mentions stroke in only one of his plays, and he calls it apoplexy. As cited by Lance Fogan in “The neurology in Shakespeare” (1989. Arch Neurol. 46:922-924), Falstaff speaks of apoplexy several times in Henry IV, Part II, eg, “This apoplexy is, as I take it, a kind of lethargy, an’t please your lordship; a kind of sleeping in the blood, a whoreson tingling.” I thought that Shakespeare must refer more often to “stroke,” but a quick search showed the word used only as in the blow of a sword. In C. Martin Mitchell’s 1949 book The Shakespeare Circle: A Life of Dr. John Hall (Birmingham, United Kingdom: Cornish Brothers), I came across the possibility that Shakespeare’s own death involved “apoplexy.” In the second chapter of Literature, Neurology, and Neuroscience, Joost Haan writes about locked-in syndrome. This very interesting chapter cites three classic and accurate literary descriptions of this most frustrating and terrifying condition. New to me was Émile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin. Even more precisely delineated were the descriptions in the more familiar The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (“like a corpse with living eyes”) and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by JeanDominique Bauby. Most agonizingly, the Bauby work is a memoir by a journalist who lived with the condition. His book was later made into an excellent movie of the same name. In the third chapter, Yuri Zagvazdin writes about meningitis, primarily in Russian literature. I found this chapter hard going. The author cites many Russian writers unknown to me; there is almost excessive repetition about cold weather as a precipitant of meningitis, as well as much emphasis on emotional stress as a factor. Zagvazdin also brings up some more familiar novels, including Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, as well as works by Herman Hesse, Aldous Huxley, Carson McCullers, and Thomas Mann. This chapter definitely requires the reader’s effortful attention. Chapter 4 is easier to digest. Here Bogousslavsky and Paciaroni discuss Parkinson disease in poetry and prose, and in poets and writers. Among the writers who have described aspects of Parkinson disease are Miguel de Cervantes, Charles Dickens, Harold Pinter, John Updike, and Jonathan Franzen. In King Henry VI, the following lines make clear that Shakespeare was aware of the disease: “Why dost thou quiver, man?” “The palsy, and not fear, provokes me.” Oliver Sacks, of course, wrote about postencephalitic parkinsonism in Awakenings. A writer who had Parkinson disease was Arthur Koestler. Koestler ultimately committed suicide, claiming as his reasons both the Parkinson disease and leukemia. In Chapter 5, Andrea Goulet addresses neurosyphilis. She emphasizes the writings of Joris-Karl Huysmans, Jules Lermina, and Guy de The reviewer declares no conflicts of interest. BOOK REVIEW

Literature, neurology, and neuroscience: historical and literary connections. Preface.

This is the first of two volumes titled Literature, Neurology, and Neuroscience. With the subtitle, Historical and Literary Connections, it examines a broad range of association between literature and neuroscience, including literary authors’ ties to prominent neuroscientists; neurologists who penned famous literary works; and deployment of the latest theories of brain and mind in the literatures of various periods, particularly during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Its companion piece on literature, subtitled Neurological and Psychiatric Disorders, focuses more on specific neurological diagnoses and their treatments, as depicted in English, French, and Russian literature from the Early Modern Period until the present day. Authors in this companion volume explore conditions as diverse as stroke, meningitis, parkinsonism, and neurosyphilis, and treatments ranging from lobotomy to electroconvulsive therapy. These two Progress in Brain Research volumes were preceded in 2013 by two other edited volumes, The Fine Arts, Neurology, and Neuroscience, and they will be followed (in 2015) by two volumes to be called Music, Neurology, and Neuroscience. Nineteenth-century literature and neuroscience are particularly well-represented in this volume. This seems appropriate, since the nineteenth century witnessed the establishment of neuroscience as a discipline. In the second half of the nineteenth century, for instance, David Ferrier, John Hughlings Jackson, and others conducted seminal studies on cerebral localization; Santiago Ramón y Cajal discovered the neuron; and Wilhelm Wundt established the first laboratory devoted to experimental psychology. This was also a time when science and literature were particularly responsive to one another, since disciplinary boundaries were more porous than they are today. During this period, nonscientists could write with some authority about neurological phenomena in mainstream publications, while specialized scientific journals like Brain (1878–present) and Mind (1876–present) were just getting off the ground. Many of the essays in this volume explore the connections between literature and neuroscience during this tumultuous century. Others examine the legacy of nineteenth-century neuroscientific discoveries in twentieth and twenty-first century writings. This volume is divided into four sections. In Part 1, “Literature and Neuroscientific Discoveries,” authors examine how specific neurological discoveries influenced famous literary works and vice versa. For instance, Cajal’s neuron doctrine surfaced in Oscar Wilde’s fiction of the early 1890s, such as in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), whereas earlier literary accounts of electric fish probably stimulated the discovery of the animal (neuromuscular) electricity during the second half of the eighteenth century. Additionally, studies of retinal after-images by Franz Boll and Wilhelm Kühne influenced fiction by Rudyard Kipling and Jules Verne, among others. This section also considers how certain literary works, such as Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (1913–1927), served as touchstones for scientific discussion. In Proust’s case, the famous madeleine episode is frequently cited in