Diseases of the nervous system are a relatively small but vitally important part of medicine. There was no scientific basis for diagnosis or treatment until the seventeenth century when Dr Thomas Willis (1621-1675) and his team tackled anatomy by dissection of the nervous system, physiology by animal experiments and pathology by post-mortem analysis. It was Willis who first used the word "neurology" and his team, who were among the founders of the Royal Society, included Christopher Wren who, besides being famous as an architect of London's churches, drew the first modern diagram of the human brain. Developments in our knowledge of the nervous system in the following centuries, and the unique importance of clinical neurology, became globally recognised through the work of Whytt, Heberden, Hughlings Jackson, Gowers and many others.The work and discoveries of these eminent specialists were extended with the introduction of such neurosciences as neurophysiology, neuropathology and neuro-radiology, and this is the first comprehensive account of a battle with the unknown by determined practitioners.

The first British book on neurology in music was published over 30 years ago. Edited by Drs Macdonald Critchley and R A Henson, it was entitled Music and the Brain (published by Wm Heinemann Medical Books), but all of its contributors are now either retired or deceased. Since then, there has been an increasing amount of research, and the present volume includes the most significant of these advances. The book begins with the evolutionary basis of meaning in music and continues with the historical perspectives, after which the human nervous system is compared to a clavichord, highlighting the use of metaphor in the history of modern neurology. It discusses the neurologist in the concert hall as well as the musician at the bedside by showing how neurology enriches musical perception, the main theme being the cerebral localisation of music production and perception. The book also emphasises the value of teaching singing to treat speech disorders and the importance of nerve compression in musicians, the final chapter being on recent techniques of imaging the musical brain.

The book presents a basis for the interaction of the brain and nervous system with painting, music and literature, and a discussion of art from multiple facets such as anatomy, migraine, illusion and evolutionary biology. The book explores several aspects of the neurobiology of painting, including evolutionary neurobiology, sensation vs. perception, the visual brain and how the mind works, and also explores the affects of brain disorders and trauma on artist, with a concluding chapter on Frida Kahlo and the spinal cord injury that influenced her painting.