Second Thoughts - Science, The Arts and The Spirit - with a French-Canadian Epilogue
(Dr. Wilder Penfield, the versatile Canadian scientist, su...)
Dr. Wilder Penfield, the versatile Canadian scientist, surgeon and writer of historical novels, has given us his second book of essays, a sequel to the popular "Second Career".
(The pioneering and creative brain surgeon recounts the co...)
The pioneering and creative brain surgeon recounts the course of his eventful life and career, detailing the drama and tensions of his endeavors, discoveries, and breakthroughs in neurology, neurophysiology, and neurosurgery
Wilder Graves Penfield was neurosurgeon, scientist. He was founder and first director of the Montreal Neurological Institute and established the "Montreal procedure" for the surgical treatment of epilepsy.
Background
Penfield was born on 26 January 1891 in Spokane, Washington. Penfield spent his early years at the Galahad School in Hudson, Wisconsin, where his mother worked as a housekeeper. His father was a physician and died when Penfield was very young. To support herself and her family, Penfield's mother became a writer and Bible teacher.
Education
Upon graduation in 1909, Penfield was accepted at Princeton University.
After graduation from Princeton with a degree in literature, he studied at Oxford with Sir William Osler and later entered medical school at Johns Hopkins.
Career
Penfield received his M. D. in 1918 and then returned to Oxford to work with the famous neurologist Sir Charles Sherrington.
There in 1924 Penfield founded the Laboratory of Neurocytology at Presbyterian Hospital, Columbia University, and worked there as associate attending surgeon from 1921 to 1928. By that time he had completed several hundred operations, specializing in the treatment of epilepsy by removing scarred brain tissue. For example, he was able to locate several adjacent areas within the motor cortex that control movements on the opposite side of the body.
In 1928 he was appointed neurosurgeon to the Royal Victoria Hospital and the Montreal General Hospital. It was here that he perfected his surgical operation for severe epilepsy. He had learned, perfected, and adapted the many techniques used in this operation from visits to Europe he had made while at Montreal.
The resulting book, Cytology and Cellular Pathology of the Nervous System (1932), turned into a three volume discussion of neurology.
In 1934, Penfield was given the funds to found the Montreal Neurological Institute and became its first director in 1934, holding this post until 1960.
Penfield's wartime experiences supplied two books; Manual of Military Neurosurgery (1941) and Epilepsy and Cerebral Localization (1941). After the war he continued his studies on epilepsy by undertaking a study of the removal of brain scars resulting from birth injuries.
Wilder also received numerous scientific awards and lectureships. He helped found the Vanier Institute of the Family and served as its first president (1965 - 1968).
He traveled abroad many times and even lectured in China and Russia.
Penfield published The Difficult Art of Giving, The Epic of Alan Gregg (1967), a biography of the Rockefeller Foundation and the director who had approved the $1. 2 million grant for the founding of the Montreal Neurological Institute, during this period.
Second Thoughts; Science, the Arts and the Spirit (1970) and The Mystery of the Mind: A Critical Study of Conscience and the Human Brain (1975) were also published as he lectured around the world. This work was published posthumously in 1977 and was a fitting tribute to a man who was remembered by his friends and colleagues as one who always thought of his discoveries as just "exciting beginnings. "
In choosing this approach, he was influenced by Sherrington and by John Hughlings Jackson, a British neurologist who viewed epilepsy as "an experiment of nature, " which may reveal the functional organization of the human brain. The patient is able to cooperate fully in describing the results of cortical stimulation.
By this surgical method it is possible in some patients to localize and remove a brain lesion responsible for epileptic attacks. Penfield used this approach primarily for the treatment of focal epilepsy.
The results of temporal lobe stimulation are described in Epilepsy and the Functional Anatomy of the Human Brain (1954), and his remarkable observations on temporal lobe epilepsy are also recorded there. Penfield was convinced that the brain of man-including all cortical areas-is controlled and "organized" through a group of subcortical centers.
These centers lie within the upper brainstem and include the thalamus.
For this functionally important area he coined the term "centrencephalon, " and his view may be described as a "centrencephalic" theory of cerebral organization.
There is much evidence for such a theory, and Penfield developed it in his Sherrington Lectures, The Excitable Cortex in Conscious Man (1958).
Penfield's writings on the relationship between science and religion reflected his insight as a renowned scientist and dedicated humanist.
Views
Quotations:
". .. rest is not what the brain needs.
Rest destroys the brain".
Membership
Royal Society of London, Royal Society of Canada.
Interests
When Penfield attended Merton College, he was influenced by 2 great medical teachers, Sir William Osler, who became his lifelong hero, and the eminent neurophysiologist Charles Sherrington, who introduced him to experimental investigation of the nervous system.
Sport & Clubs
During studying at Princeton University Wilder was a member of Cap and Gown Club and played on the football team. He was so good at football, that upon graduation in 1913, he was hired as a coach.
Connections
Penfield married Helen Kermott in 1917, when began studying at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.