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The Gloucester Neurology book club gathered in a large gothic living room next to a crackling fire one October evening to discuss Clinical Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System (1895) by Sir William Gowers. The book is a transcription of Gowers’ most important lectures, delivered at the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic in London. Each lecture focusses on a particular neurological syndrome, fleshed out by a description of a patient brought in before the students, and also by Gowers’ own personal experiences. These lectures can be accessed in PDF format for free on the Wellcome Collection website. Gowers is widely recognised to be one of the greatest neurologists in British history, and so this seemed an obvious choice for book club. The response to it—unusually, for book club—was one of overwhelming positivity.
The main theme from the discussion was reverence at Gowers’ extraordinary skills …
Footnotes
Original reference Clinical lectures on diseases of the nervous system : delivered at the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic, London / by W.R. Gowers. Public Domain Mark. Source: Wellcome Collection. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/km3qa8ht
Contributors KRM is the sole author of this paper.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.