Full Description
In 1930, George Riddoch, Charles Symonds, Russell Brain, Hugh Cairns, Macdonald Critchley, and Derek Denny-Brown formed the Hexagon Club with the aim of discussing over dinner developments in medical and surgical neurology. Over the next ten years, they met on thirty-two occasions, sometimes with guests, and discussed forty-two topics of past or emerging clinical and research interest. Honed in this way, the presentations led to a large number of publications, many of lasting importance.
This was a time of transition in medicine and society. The members' lives illustrate the experience of medical service in the First World War carried forward to responsibility for developing neurological services during the Second World War; training in neurology and neurosurgery with independence from general medicine and surgery; developing the model of specialist departments distributed in regional centres adopted by the National Health Service; and the interplay of neurology and culture.
Based on the only surviving copy of the Hexagon Club minutes and other previously unknown archival material, the book is written by a specialist able to summarise complex topics in neurology. It will attract general readers with an interest in medical history, neurologists and neurosurgeons interested in the evolution of their professional work, and historians of the medical profession in society during the middle decades of the twentieth century.
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1
The Hexagon Club: origins and membership.
Chapter 2
George Riddoch (27 December 1888-24 October 1947)
Chapter 3
Charles Putnam Symonds (11 April 1890-7 December 1978)
Chapter 4
Walter Russell Brain (23 October 1895-29 December 1966)
Chapter 5
Hugh William Bell Cairns (26 June 1896-18 July 1952)
Chapter 6
Macdonald Critchley (2 February 1900-15 October 1997)
Chapter 7
Derek Ernest Denny-Brown (1 June 1901-20 April 1981)
Chapter 8
1st-3rd meetings of the Hexagon Club: 1930
Chapter 9
4th-7th meetings of the Hexagon Club: 1931
Chapter 10
8th-11th meetings of the Hexagon Club: 1932
Chapter 11
12th-14th meetings of the Hexagon Club: 1933
Chapter 12
15th-18th meetings of the Hexagon Club: 1934
Chapter 13
19th-21st meetings of the Hexagon Club: 1935
Chapter 14
22nd-25th meetings of the Hexagon Club: 1936
Chapter 15
26th-28th meetings of the Hexagon Club: 1937
Chapter 16
29th-31st meetings of the Hexagon Club: 1938
Chapter 17
32nd meeting of the Hexagon Club: 1939
Chapter 18
The Hexagon Club: a conspectus.
