Book Description

"In the 1930s, Tracy J. Putnam and H. Houston Merritt were Harvard neurologists when they discovered Dilantin, the revolutionary anticonvulsant drug that changed the lives of many and can be considered as a breakthrough on a par with penicillin or insulin." "Putnam was a brilliant and imaginative experimentalist, but not always correct in the theories he pursued. Merritt was the practical one, an observer, fact-collector, and recorder of what would now be called "evidence-based medicine." From his early days, Merritt was a popular and remarkable diagnostician. Their careers merged later, when first Putnam and then Merritt became head of the Neurological Institute in New York at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center." "Putnam moved to California in 1947 and died in relative obscurity in 1975. He had no intellectual heirs. Merritt flourished and about one-third of all Neurology Departments in the United States were led by his students. Merritt's textbook first appeared in 1955. He was the sole author through the first five editions, accepted some help in the sixth edition, and died in 1979 as it was being published. Together, Putnam and Merritt led the way in transforming neurology from merely diagnostic to therapeutic success." "For the first time, The Legacy of Tracy J. Putnam and H. Houston Merritt: Modern Neurology in the United States will set this spoken history into written form. Beautifully illustrated with historic photographs, Dr. Lewis P. Rowland tells the story of two founders of modern neurology in a clear, engaging and enthusiastic prose."--BOOK JACKET.