In the introduction to Neurology and Modernity, Laura Salisbury and Andrew Shail argue that the mid-nineteenth century ‘was the period when neurology became a distinct and … dominant mode for representing the more general vagaries of the embodied and mental life of the modern self’ and ‘the moment when nervousness assumed a dominant cultural life of its own’ (pp. 6, 26). The intention of the volume is thus to explore the ‘network of mutually interpenetrating connections between neurology and modernity’ (p. 9), utilizing the methods of cultural history to explicate the roles that neurology and modernity had in each others’ development, and how they each contributed to conceptions of selfhood at the time. This is a worthy aspiration, not least since writing now from a (postmodern?) setting where neuroscientific concepts loom so large in our explanations of the human condition, it surely seems a valid enterprise again to look back at the way nerves became such an important aspect of medical and popular understandings of the body in the modern period. The approach taken in this book obviously brings its own particular limits as well as merits, but historians of science are assured: ‘Neurology and Modernity approaches neurology as more than mere “context” behind the supposedly more important business of aesthetic production’ (p. 34).

The collection is composed of thirteen papers which address a range of neurologically conceived objects, ideas and practices, mostly in Britain and America. Emphasis is placed particularly on pathological conditions that came under neurology's remit during the period: maladies like ‘railway spine’, phantom limbs, paranoia and shell shock are all given a cultural treatment. The book also covers a broad period – modernity is here extended from early nineteenth-century phrenology to the sci-fi psychon of the mid-twentieth – although for obvious reasons the late nineteenth century is particularly well studied. The chapters are chronologically arranged and topics are well chosen to contribute towards the main project. Indeed, the selection and ordering of the chapters allows for an overall narrative to form, so that contributions are generally cumulative and enable us to see several themes develop throughout the book. For example, though ostensibly studying quite different topics, both Hisao Ishizuka's paper on Thomas Carlyle's dyspepsia and George Rousseau's chapter on artistic paranoia highlight persistent concerns over the nature and causes of nervous disease. Similarly, Michael K. House's chapter on sceptical and satirical responses to Franz Joseph Gall, and Laura Salisbury's on later aphasiology studies, both present ‘holistic’ critiques of, and alternatives to, materialist conceptions of mind. In the hundred or so years between these case studies, criticisms of the idea of localized brain functions remained but also developed in line with prevailing scientific and cultural values.

For a volume with such a tight theme there is surprisingly little repetition between chapters, and several of the contributions genuinely move the study of nineteenth-century nervousness into new territory, showing that neurasthenics were not the only patients that stimulated neurological discussion. Not all the material is entirely novel, but effort is made to present previously well-studied sources in a new light: neurological concepts like irritability and pressure, for example, are greatly illuminated by the approach of the book. At times, however, it does become quite difficult to read, with several chapters guilty of needless verbosity. The exegesis of specific texts is overstretched and, despite the editors’ aims, neurology does occasionally slip behind as context to other cultural products. Though the discourses of neurology and modernity are proposed to be symbiotic, the book's contributors are always on stronger ground when dealing with the latter. Moreover, though the work is generally fairly sophisticated in its understanding of the issues under consideration, it could perhaps have benefited from a more reflective approach with regard to its own historical endeavour. History writing, like neurology, came of age in the modern period; history objectified the past as neurological medicine objectified the body. The historiographical implications of this for Neurology and Modernity could have been further explored and would potentially strengthen the central argument of the book.

Though it is light on notes, the book is not designed for the general reader; nor is it aimed at any one disciplinary audience. It points towards a wider range of relevant issues for historians of neuroscience whilst discerning, through multiple case studies, a clear link between the discourses of neurology and the modern self which might concern cultural historians or English scholars: indeed, it is likely that students of literature will benefit most from the volume. Despite some reservations, Neurology and Modernity is a well-defined and ably realized collection of papers that will prove a useful contribution to studies of mind and body and their relation to wider culture in the modern period.