(Contemporary Neurology Series. 71.) Fourth edition. By Jerome B. Posner, Clifford B. Saper, Nicholas D. Schiff, and Fred Plum. 401 pp., illustrated. New York, Oxford University Press, 2007. $79.50. ISBN 978-0-19-532131-9.
Long before the public fascination with coma began, the stateof unconsciousness had a primal appeal to physicians of allstripes. The understanding of coma stretches from Baron Constantinvon Economo's observations of brain-stem encephalitis in 1917,to Hans Berger's discovery of brain waves in the 1920s, to GiuseppeMoruzzi and Horace Magoun's experimental anatomical work ofthe 1940s. Yet writings on the bedside observations of comawere littered with pompous prose about apoplexy (including somewritten by William Osler) until the clinical investigationsof Donald McNealy and Fred Plum, which led to the publicationin 1966 of the first . . . [Full Text of this Article]
Previous
