The Neurologic Diagnosis

Neurology has been viewed as the study of the source of humanity. Personality, intelligence, and mood alterations are manifestations of brain function or dysfunction. Neurology has also been bedeviled with an unjustified assumption that diseases of the nervous system are observable but untreatable. This misconception has been handed down through generations of medical students because of the dearth of sufficient instruction in the early years of medical school. Furthermore, it is commonly asserted that neurologic diseases are uniquely incurable. This fallacious argument, often promulgated by poorly educated physicians, conveniently forgets that most illnesses are incurable. Only when physicians have been in practice for a few years do they recognize the importance of neurologic symptoms and their inability to analyze them. The Neurologic Diagnosis: Practical Strategies for Medical Students and Residents is an introductory text that simplifies the often unwieldy method of making aneurologic diagnosis. Medical students are often intimidated by a deluge of data, extensive differential diagnoses, and have no organizational structure to follow. Diagnostic techniques of general medicine are not applicable. Neurology is a unique specialty since it requires the intermediary step of an anatomic diagnosis prior to proffering a differential diagnosis. Yet the required knowledge of neuroanatomy need not be profound for the student who will specialize in any field other than neurology and neurosurgery. This text is directed to medical students and residents who will all be regularly faced with numerous patients who have neurologic symptomatology. Typical one-month neurology rotations out of four years of medical school is clearly inadequate training to make a cogent neurologic diagnosis, especially since subsequent instruction is commonly provided by upper level residents who have the same background and numerous misconceptions. This is not a comprehensive text. The emphasis in