Week 11 - Open Forum - Monday

The open forum, which will be posted Monday, Wednesday and Friday (as needed) will allow for the smooth transition of discussion. Forums are designed to provide a leisurely paced medical science forum (or conference). Comments, suggestions, and input from the general public is welcome.

Beyond Neurology and Physiology - Part 1

This seems like an oximoron, but evidence is showing up that there is more beyond neurology and physiology. Both fields of study take the view that all existance is real and physical. Neurology, has long held the view that all though functions reside within the brian and behaviors are just chemical functions of the brain. To prove the "reality" of neurology, neurologist turn to the physiology of the body to demonstrate the correlation between body function and the brain. For example, when an arm moves, there is a section of the brain that controls this fuction. Elementary neurology, at the very beginning of the field (via disection and experimentation) much of the body's movement was mapped to the brain. Further, disection revealed various structures of the brain and the connetion of the brain to the nervous system, via the brain stem. The most basic of which is the hemispherical structure of the brain - specifically the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere. Beyond this, there is the fore, middle and hind sections of the brain. As see in the image on the right [http://www.med.harvard.edu/AANLIB/home.html , Harvard Medical School Whole Brain Atlas] .




This image on the right, is a modern image of what's been studied from early on. Images below, are the ones that dominated neurology from it's earliest times. Gray's Anatomy, published in 1918, is widely recognized as the standard atlas of the human body. The first image is a diagram of left eye as it connects to the optic nerve. Here, it was obvious (to the medical scientists) that the eyes weren't the windows of the soul. Further, they found that (in comparitive anatomy) that human anatomy related to animal anatomy. This meant, that with a shortage of human bodies to experiment on, they could use animal bodies instead. Then with the few bodies they did have - donated by the person who had died - they could compare anatomical structure and function.

Early medicine looked much like it was described in the book "Frankenstien". Human bodies were experimented on just like animal bodies. The search was for the soul, the spark of life and ultimately God. However, as they experimented, all the ever found was the physical components of the human body. A body constructed just like that of an animal. As experimentation continued, ideas of how the brain formed and where the mind was, became a very hot topic. However, a collection of well formed brains were off-limits. You couldn't experiment on the healthy - so they turned to the sick. The was the beginning of the asylums (which are now often the settings for horror stories). Here, the sick could be experimented on - for their own good of course. The sick, however, showed no physiological symptoms of their illness and previously it was considered a sickness of the soul. The practioners of curing the soul were - psychologists and studied the field of psychology. (Psycho [commonly pronounced as s-eye-ko, and as see-ko by the Greeks] is the Greek word for soul, so the psychologist is the person who studies the soul and psychology is the study of the soul (the field of study). As the studies grew, the concept of the brains connection to the soul became a focal point. They first found that this illness was hereditary and not contagious. They found, as the collection of people with the soul sickness grew, they had whole families. This meant that soul sickness wasn't contagious (an illness caught) but hereditary (they were born with it). This was good news because hereditary traits like hair, eyes, etc. can be studied - medically.

Here, the psychologist (who just studied the soul), now became the medical scientist - the psychiatrist. The attention of these new medical scientist began with the interest in the bumps on the heads of those with soul sickness. This confirmed, for them, that the soul sickness was in the head and a condition of the nerves and nervous system. They knew from animal experiments that animal brains and limbs responded to electric shock - so to cure patients with a nervous condition (previously a soul sickness) - they started shocking them in a procedure that became known as shock therapy. In experiments, patients seemed to respond positively to shock therapy. However, it didn't last so a series of shock treatments were often perscribed. (These are the origin of the blood-curdling screems heard in horror stories set in asylums.) Further, this was the definitive proof needed for them to make the conclusion that it was the brain responsible for the nervous condition and not the soul.

Week 9 - Open Forum - Monday

The open forum, which will be posted Monday, Wednesday and Friday (as needed) will allow for the smooth transition of discussion. Forums are designed to provide a leisurely paced medical science forum (or conference). Comments, suggestions, and input from the general public is welcome.

Week 7 - Open Forum - Friday

The open forum, which will be posted Monday, Wednesday and Friday, will allow for the smooth transition of discussion. Forums are designed to provide a leisurely paced medical science forum (or conference). Comments, suggests, and input from the general public is welcome.