Brain Battles: Locating the History of Neurosurgery

This dissertation explores the history of neurosurgery from multiple perspectives –
national and international, internalist and externalist, long-term and temporally-focused
– thereby seeking to do justice to the diversity of authorial voices that characterize the
historiography of this medical specialty. At a more fundamental level, the dissertation
draws on the history of neurosurgery as a case study to analyze the historiographic
divide between physicians and professional historians that characterizes the history
of medicine more broadly. To accomplish this goal, this dissertation comprises three
chronologically organized parts, each containing one chapter that conforms to the
medical historiographic culture of physicians and one that conforms to the medical
historiographic culture of professional historians. Together, the chapters paint a
colorful picture of neurosurgery’s past while simultaneously exposing the profound
historiographic schism that cleaves the history of medicine.
Following the six chapters, the theme of the divergent medical historiographic
cultures of physicians and professional historians will be revisited in the discussion.
Here, the numerous medical-historiographic differences will be untangled based on a
comparative analysis of two of the chapters of the dissertation and personal reflections
on several revealing interactions with physicians and professional historians. The
discussion will conclude with a series of recommendations to start bridging “the two
cultures” in the history of medicine. These recommendations include the creation
of common ground, fostering intellectual exchange, facilitating interdisciplinary
education, and exploring innovative research methods and outreach strategies. As a
whole, the dissertation seeks to address an audience of healthcare professionals and
professional historians. While healthcare professionals may be naturally drawn to the
technical chapters and professional historians to the more contextualized chapters,
those who gravitate towards one half of the dissertation are invited to read the other
half. The recommendations put forth in this dissertation are neither exhaustive nor
final; others are invited to join the conversation and to contribute to a future history
of medicine that is not only attentive to the greatest possible variety of voices from
the past but also celebrates diversity among its own ranks in the common pursuit to
reconstruct medicine’s multifaceted past to the benefit of humanity.