cover image Newton's Madness: Further Tales of Clinical Neurology

Newton's Madness: Further Tales of Clinical Neurology

Harold L. Klawans. HarperCollins Publishers, $17.95 (218pp) ISBN 978-0-06-016256-6

The often bizarre cases with which Klawans ( Toscanini's Fumble ) illustrates this collection of his lectures on neurology and pharmacology at Chicago's Rush University and with which he intrigues readers are both informative and entertaining. In clear lay terms he describes multiple sclerosis, dwarfism, epileptic and other movement disorders such as Parkinson's, Huntington's chorea, tics, as observed in his own patients. He also diagnoses ailments of historical figures--Newton's mercury-caused madness, Dostoyevski's epileptic characters reflecting his own seizures, Heinrich Heine's syphilis-induced nervous breakdowns--which today could be arrested or cured. (May)