The Currency of Consciousness: Neurology, Specialization, and the Global Practices of Medicine

Abstract

This article explores the formation of a global community of neurologists between 1918 and 1970. Relying chiefly upon documents located in Anglo-American archives, its argument follows a narrative from money to memory, and posits that this global community of neurologists formed not out of a shared science and medicine of the nervous system, but out of shared dispositions in tastes, values, and culture. The localism and heterogeneity of the science and medicine of the nervous system was in fact so pronounced that neurologists – especially when they worked as “global citizens” – were forced to focus upon their superficial commonalities rather than examine local distinctions. This avoidance of a direct effort to define the content of neurology – or at least to confront their differences – exercised a peculiar influence on the specialty. Neurologists and their “official memory” became negotiated, and even imagined constructs. Consequently, these diverse cultures were ultimately subordinated to dominant economic interests.