Book Note

William Feindel and Richard Leblanc. The Wounded Brain Healed: The Golden Age of the Montreal Neurological Institute, 1934–1984. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016. 632 pp. Ill. $100.00 (978-0-7735-4637-0).

This book takes its title from Galen, whose words, “I have seen the wounded brain heal,” are inscribed on the lobby ceiling of the Montreal Neurological Institute. Wilder Penfield, its first director, established the MNI in 1934 to pursue neurological research and to care for patients disabled with brain injuries. He and his colleagues designed the EEG test to study epilepsy and developed new treatments that have since been adopted worldwide. In their lengthy and lavishly illustrated book, the authors describe other pioneering research, such as the discoveries of two types of memory and the localization of speech-related areas of the brain, that took place during the first fifty years of the Institute. Wounded Brain Healed is divided into four parts, each dealing with the first three institute directors (author Feindel was director no. 3) and a section titled “Themes,” written by contributing authors.

The Editors