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Portrait of Miguel de Cervantes, attributed to Juan de Jáuregui (1600) (left). Front cover of the first edition of part I of Don Quixote (1605) dedicated to the Duke of Béjar and printed by Juan de la Cuesta, in Madrid (right).
Source publication
Don Quixote de la Mancha, which is considered one of the most important and influential works of Western modern prose, contains many references of interest for almost all of the medical specialties. In this regard, numerous references to neurology can be found in Cervantes' immortal work. In this study, we aimed to read Don Quixote from a neurologi...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... the first volume of his novel El ingenioso hi- dalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, popularly known as Don Quixote , which is considered one of the most important and influential works of Western prose, rivalled only by the Bible for the number of languages into which it has been translated. The second volume was published a de- cade later, in 1615 ( fig. 1 ...
Context 2
... this context, there is evidence that Cervantes owned a private library with more than 200 volumes, including medical books written by acclaimed Spanish physicians [26] . One of these volumes was Examen de ingenios (The examination of men's wits) , written by Juan Huarte de San Juan (1529-1588) ( fig. 3 ). This immortal and unique work, printed in 1575, reprinted at least 80 times, and translated into seven languages [27] , is considered a founding work of neuropsychology, as Huarte strove to establish the relationships between brain, temper, and in- genuity from a mechanistic point of view [28] . ...
Similar publications
A case involving a 13-year-old girl with nonfunctioning pituitary macroadenoma is discussed. The patient visited the hospital for checkup after experiencing a head injury secondary to syncope. A computed tomography (CT) scan revealed a pituitary mass with mildly higher density. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with contrast enhancement showed that...
Citations
... tremors associated with fear or anxiety;, headaches and sleep disturbances associated with anxiety and many neuropsychiatric symptoms of different severity). Some have reviewed the sources of neurological information that Miguel de Cervantes used in writing his novel (Spanish authors such as Juan Huarte de San Juan, Dionisio Daza Chacón and Juan Valverde de Amusco) and hypothesize that Don Quixote suffered from a neurological condition, and that many of the symptoms he exhibits are not a disease, but a physiological consequence of the emotional circumstances of the plot (Palma & Palma, 2012). thrown into sharp relief by the contrasting attitude of his squire, Sancho Panza. ...
In this article we argue that in order to understand failure or success in adapting to environmental change, we should better understand why people hesitate to pursue novel choices. This article asks: what forces hinder individuals’ exploration choices of different alternatives, and hence their ability to learn from them? To answer this question, this article looks to the cognitive sciences to identify a set of plausible mechanisms that hinder people’s tendency to explore. So far, “exploration” has been studied as a relatively monolithic behavior. Instead, we propose that exploration can be characterized in terms of some distinctive forces behind it. On one hand, agents experience “attachment” to choices that proved successful in the past, and hence comfort when sticking with them. On the other hand, they also experience concerns about less familiar options, as they lack knowledge about “distant” choices that have not been tried for a long time, or ever. We propose that high attachment is related to anxiety, and high distance to fear. Both these negative affective states hinder exploration. We find and discuss preliminary and tentative evidence of this effect.
... Therefore, some have hypothesized this to be a case of FaD. 81,82 We intend to facilitate the comprehension of the disorder in persons having dementia by describing, in the subsequent paragraph, some cases drawn from the scientific literature. In the first example, Draper and Cole 83 described a case in which both partners with FaD had Alzheimer's disease (AD). ...
Background:
Folie à deux is a clinical condition that was first described in 19th century. It is a psychotic disorder in which two closely associated individuals share a similar delusional system.
Objectives:
The aim of this article is to review the nosological significance of folie à deux and to explore the disorder among patients with dementia.
Methods:
Medline and Google Scholar searches were conducted for relevant articles, chapters, and books published before 2017. Search terms used included dementia, folie à deux, induced delusional disorder, neurocognitive disorders, shared psychotic disorder. Publications found through this indexed search were reviewed for further relevant references.
Results and conclusion:
Cases of Folie à deux involving patients with dementia are reported quite infrequently. Most of the studies on the topic consist in case reports. Clinicians are obliged to treat the disorder. They should be alert to the potential high risk inherent this psychotic syndrome.
Memory and its care were significant sociocultural and scientific topics in early modern Spain. While a major interest in memory was related to its rhetorical implications, medical treatises discussing memory, cognitive impairment, and its treatment began to appear in the 16th- and 17th-century. Among these treatises, Disputationes phylosophicæ ac medicæ super libros Aristotelis de memoria, et reminiscentia (Philosophical and medical arguments on Aristotle's "De memoria et reminiscentia"), published in 1629 by the physician Juan Gutiérrez de Godoy, is unique in that it is entirely devoted to the medical aspects of memory. While many of its concepts are now superseded, the treatise is valuable to understand the views on memory and cognitive impairment in 17th-century Spain and their sources, as Gutiérrez quoted many classical, medieval, and contemporary scholars and physicians. The book, written in Latin, is exclusively devoted to memory from a physiological and medical point of view, with chapters on the classification of memory loss, a description of its causes (including old age, something not widely recognized before), and several chapters on its prevention and treatment, with a fascinating emphasis on confectio anacardina, or anacardium, an intranasal concoction made with the "marking nut", the fruit of the Semecarpus anacardium tree (also known as Malacca bean), with alleged memory-enhancing properties. We review Gutiérrez's Disputationes phylosophicæ, putting it into the wider intellectual and social context in the Europe of its time, and discuss the relevance and purported neuropharmacological effects of anacardina.
Don Quixote of La Mancha, the picturesque character created by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra in his immortal book The Ingenious Nobleman Sir Quixote of La Mancha, presents several neuropsychiatric conditions, including tremor, sleep disturbances, neuropsychiatric symptoms, syncope, perception disorders and traumatic brain injury.
Throughout the masterpiece, there are episodes where the aforementioned disorders are evident. This paper makes a list of them and analyses them in the light of the current knowledge of those conditions.
Resumen
Don Quijote de la Mancha, el pintoresco personaje creado por Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra en su obra inmortal El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha, presenta varias condiciones neuropsiquiátricas que incluyen tremor, trastornos del sueño, síntomas neuropsiquiátricos, síncope, trastornos de la percepción y traumatismo craneoencefálico.
A lo largo de la obra, se presentan episodios en los que se hacen evidentes los diferentes trastornos mencionados. El artículo hace un recuento de ellos a través de la novela y un análisis a la luz de los conocimientos actuales sobre dichas condiciones.
This article presents a non-canonical reading of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s canonical novel Don Quixote. Using a trauma theory lens (from both cultural studies and psychiatry) to understand the pre-Don Quixote character Alonso Quijano, this research first advances several new arguments as to why Quijano appears to have endured a traumatic experience of ageing. Instead of interpreting his obsessive behaviour as madness, it is argued that he engages in a form of both individual and collective therapy consisting of reading to educate himself about emotions; engaging the body in adventures; listening to others’ stories of traumatic suffering; and stimulating “empathic unsettlement” toward others and his previously traumatized self, one of the main critical suggestions advanced. This article takes an original turn in trauma studies too by putting forward that Quijano’s therapy is effective because it addresses the “central dialectic of psychological trauma.” He embarks on an imaginative and collective adventure of self-identity, transforming himself into another who is exempt from the traumatic experience; he knows without knowing and speaks without speaking. His trauma therapy occurs outside the reality of trauma or inside the “unreality” of creative expression, and this is how he endures a traumatic experience of ageing.
Introduction: The purpose of this study is to review and summarize the life and work of Juan Valverde de Amusco (1525–1588), his impact on the anatomy of the sixteenth century and focus on his controversy with Andreas Vesalius.
Methods: A thorough search of the literature was undertaken in PubMed and Google Scholar as well as in history books through the internet and in History and Medical University libraries.
Results: Valverde took almost directly from Andreas Vesalius 38 pictures. Occasionally, however, Valverde corrected Vesalius’ images, as in his depictions of the muscles of the eyes, nose and larynx.
Conclusion: Valverde copied the work of Vesalius in many instances. Nevertheless, he had his fair share of contribution in the history of Anatomy; he managed to popularize and spread the new anatomy of the Rennaissance through his work which was far more cheaper than that of Vesalius; furthermore, his anatomic discoveries like the first depiction of the intracranial course of the carotid arteries (several decades before Willis’s description), the extrinsic ocular muscles and the middle ear bones contribute to the spirit of the Scientific Revolution.
It is known that Miguel de Cervantes's novel 'Don Quixote de La Mancha' has done and is still doing a great contribution to the universal literature. A book that has reached such category and grows in number of its readers, shows multiple dimensions for its study. One of them is nutrition. One of the aims of this study has been to value and expound, according to their own nutrients, the kinds of food cited in 'The Quixote' and in the times of Cervantes. This has allowed the comparison made between ways of nutrition in La Mancha and in Catalonia, as well as the regions situated at the beginning and end of the itinerary covered by its main characters Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. The evaluation of the nutrients in the middle part of the itinerary, placed mainly in Aragón, has not been considered in this study. Another purpose has been to check if these nutrients followed the current recommendations of the Spanish Society of Arteriosclerosis and other valid agreements at the moment.
Copyright © 2015 Sociedad Española de Arteriosclerosis. Published by Elsevier España. All rights reserved.
