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TRANSCRIPT
Title
The Arc de Siècle: Functional neurological disorders during the ‘forgotten’ years of the
twentieth century
Authors
Max Fend1, Louise Williams2, Alan J Carson1, Jon Stone1
Affiliations:
1. Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, Chancellors Building, University of Edinburgh, UK, EH16 4TJ
2. Lothian Health Services Archive, Centre for Research Collections, Edinburgh University Library, The
University of Edinburgh, George Square, Edinburgh, UK, EH8 9LJ
Corresponding author:Prof Jon StoneDept Clinical NeurosciencesUniversity of EdinburghWestern General HospitalEdinburgh EH4 2XU
[email protected] 537 1167
Word count:
Keywords: Hysteria; Functional Neurological Disorders; Psychogenic; Neurology; Diagnosis;
Conversion Disorder
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The dark ages of ‘hysteria’
In 1900, functional neurological disorder, then known as ‘hysteria’, was a key topic of neurological
research. A condition with its own catalogue of signs, symptoms and treatment, like any other; but
one that eluded the pathologist’s gaze. ‘Hysteria’ was a standard part of the neurological curriculum
for neurologists of the period, from Charcot to Babinski in Paris, and Gowers to Henry Head in the
UK(Stone, 2016). This is well trodden ground for medical historians. However, a combination of
factors led to a steep decline in neurological interest in ‘hysteria’ after the first world war: the shell
shock epidemic and subsequent home office enquiry, the rise of the clinicopathological method and
increasing popularity of Freudian explanatory concepts of conversion disorder which were alien to
clinical neurologists, who were only too happy to leave talking cures to psychiatrists(Stone, 2016).
Although its presentation in neurology clinics appears to have remained relatively constant, twentieth-
century neurology textbooks increasingly failed to address the topic of functional neurological
disorders, until by 1970 it had almost completely disappeared from view(Stone et al., 2008). In recent
years there has been a resurgence of neurological interest in functional disorders and once again they
are edging their way back into the neurology curriculum(Hallett et al., 2016).
Diagnostic practice, and especially attitudes, are often handed down from one generation of clinicians
to the next via face to face contact. In an average neurology department, the oldest consultant was
likely trained in the 1970s or 1980s, by someone who themselves trained in the 1950s. For the student
of functional neurological disorders, it is hard to know exactly what was happening in the mid-
twentieth century, because of the relative lack of interest by neurologists. Historians and writers such
as Terry Eagleton love the idea that ‘hysteria’ was a common ailment among these women while
Charcot was alive, but ceased to be common once he died. The hysterics, so to speak, now had
nobody to perform for’. But as Jan van Gijn, Emeritus Professor of Neurology at Utrecht replied, this
contention ‘makes it clear that Eagleton is not a neurologist’(van Gijn, 2007). A more plausible
explanation might be that patients with functional neurological disorders remained common but, like
stroke and dementia, were not of much interest to the few neurologists practising at that time. If the
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patients were still there (though somehow less visible), how were neurologists diagnosing,
investigating, and treating them in these “dark ages” for ‘hysteria’? Ted Reynolds, one of very few
neurologists at Kings College Hospitals, recalled that in Queen Square in the 1960s and 1970s they
were ‘shunted’ off to psychological services because ‘none of the neurologists were interested’(Stone,
2016). If we can understand better what was happening to the condition over the arc of the 20th
century, then perhaps we can also appreciate the reasons why functional neurological disorders were,
in comparison to their apparent illumination at the ‘fin de siècle’ of the 19th century, in their own
‘dark ages’ for so long. To explore these questions, we have examined the new Norman Dott archive
in Edinburgh, and neurological textbooks and papers from the twentieth century. We also conducted
semi-structured interviews with retired British neurologists, who all practiced in the period between
Dott’s retirement in 1960 and the millennium. Neurologists Alastair Compston, Pauline Monro, Ted
Reynolds, Charles Warlow, and Roger Cull provided oral histories on their interactions with this
cohort during their careers, from education about the condition to subsequent management.
The Norman Dott Archive
Professor Norman Dott CBE (1897-1973) was an apprentice engineer, whose motorcycle accident and
subsequent treatment in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh inspired a distinguished medical career.
Dott was trainee and frequent correspondent of Harvey Cushing in Harvard (Figure 1), held the first
chair of Neurosurgery in Edinburgh, pioneered intracranial aneurysm surgery, CBE, and was (most
importantly for our purposes) a meticulous record keeper(Rush and Shaw, 1990). Not only did he
retain his own patients case notes, but also those of his multidisciplinary team. His entourage included
two neurologists, William Sneddon-Watson and Kate Hermann, the latter a German Jew fleeing the
Nazis who became the first female neurology consultant in Scotland in 1938(The Scotsman, 2007).
Consequently, Dott’s case files offer a rare window not only into the practice of a renowned
neurosurgeon, but also the department built around him. The Lothian Health Services Archive
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(LHSA) holds 28,213 case files of patients seen by Dott and the doctors he trained, during the period
from 1930-70, each case tagged according to the conditions mentioned in them.
Cases containing the keywords ‘hysteria’ or ‘hypochondriasis’ were identified and examined in the
Centre for Research Collections at the University of Edinburgh Library, with particular attention paid
to the method by which the diagnosis was made, any evidence of particular attitudes towards the
condition, and the subsequent management or lack thereof. All case quotes were given a five-year
period denomination to preserve anonymity.
Figure 1. Norman Dott (top right) during his one year fellowship with Harvey Cushing (lower
middle) in New York in 1923-4, reprinted from (Rush and Shaw, 1990)
Of the 209 cases retrieved, 31 were considered not related to functional neurological disorders. In the
remaining 178 cases, there were 138 civilian cases, (92 female and 46 male) and 40 military cases (38
male and 2 female). The median age of patients at the time of most recent consultation was 36 for
men and 43 for women. Of the 100 people who were diagnosed with ‘hysteria’, 67 were based on
positive findings such as inconsistency in limb weakness. The diagnosis and management of these
100 patients is shown in Figure 2:
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Figure 2. Diagnoses and referral pathways for patients with ‘hysteria’
Perhaps the most striking statistic is that from 28,213 cases, only 100 were diagnosed with ‘hysteria’
over the period from 1930 to 1970, indicating a prevalence in Dott’s department of less than 0.4%.
Recent studies suggest that the presentation rate of FND in general neurology clinics has remained
relatively constant at around 8%- however it is acknowledged that numerical data in this period is
‘sparse’, and certainly this sample contradicts that figure. The reader may observe that the primary
author of the case files was a neurosurgeon and therefore a lower prevalence might be expected,
however many of his trainees were neurologists, and FND can commonly present to neurosurgeons
first. Consequently, whilst biased towards neurosurgical assessment, we would still expect to see
patients with FND presenting in the Dott archive. It should also be noted that some patients were
likely diagnosed with a functional neurological disorder, not a searchable keyword in the database,
and missed as a result, but this may indicate a lower threshold for making the diagnosis at this time.
‘I took occasion to observe her walking down the street…’-Diagnosis and Attitude
DSM-5, published in 2013, bases the diagnosis of functional neurological symptom disorder (also
called conversion disorder), on the presence of typical positive features of the condition. For example,
Hoover’s sign for hip extensor weakness, or the tremor entrainment test. Common to many of the
positive signs is internal inconsistency. Evidence of this principle is buried in small sections from 5
mid-twentieth century textbooks, but what occurred in practice? One of Dott’s earliest cases provides
an example.
‘…She staggered from side to side in such an exaggerated…yet deliberate manner that I formed the
opinion that her staggering was… (due)…to a hysterical belief that she was unable to walk…certain
exercises with the hands and arms…occupied her attention. In these circumstances she could stand
quite steadily’. Dott, 1935-39
‘All movements against resistance are weaker on the left…but the patient was well able to carry
out all ordinary movements for getting dressed’. Hermann, 1940-44
‘She also failed to recognise objects placed in the hand when this was done as a deliberate test but
recognised them and used them when this was done casually’. Lowe, 1950-54
‘He walked… fairly well when he thought that he was not being observed’. Huang, 1955-59
The cases quoted above are written by different doctors at different times, yet omnipresent is an
ability to recognise positive signs of a functional neurological disorder. As previously mentioned, the
contemporary neurological literature skirted the topic, therefore where did this diagnostic capability
come from? None of our interviewees recalled receiving formalised teaching on the topic, as
undergraduates or doctors. Alastair Compston, Emeritus Professor of Neurology at Cambridge,
remembers ‘hysteria’ being thought of ‘as somewhat of an intrusion into diseases of the nervous
system as understood and accepted at Queen Square’. However, they all mentioned receiving informal
advice, as Emeritus Professor of Neurology at Edinburgh Charles Warlow put it: ‘They’d show you
the tricks of how to diagnose it’. Whilst not immediately apparent from the literature, it therefore
appears that both Dott’s department and others were perfectly able to elicit a functional neurological
disorder diagnosis. However, many examples in the letters are consistent with a medical approach
that did little to separate genuinely experienced functional neurological disorders from wilful
exaggeration:
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‘The patient walked for me with a distinct limp…I took occasion to observe her walking down the
street on leaving my house, and she then walked…naturally with no trace of disability.’ Dott, 1935-
39).
Dott’s department by no means depended solely on physical signs, and often made character
judgements that led them to the diagnosis:
‘I had no doubt at all that there was a very considerable hysterical element in the case’-Dott, 1940-
44
‘This girl is a gross hysteric whatever she is’- Paterson, 1940-44
‘On admission she was found to be hysterical and no definite abnormal neurological signs
detected’-Block, 1950-54
‘We would…consider him basically an inadequate psychopath with gross hysterical trends’-
Watson, 1955-59
The excerpts above show the term hysterical being applied to a patient, yet in none of these cases was
there written evidence for inconsistent or non-anatomical symptoms. What is often present in these
instances, is suggestion of a personality disorder:
‘Her gross walking difficulties have a hysterical aetiology…she has a tendency to convert any
current frustrations into physical disabilities’- Watson, 1945-49
‘This lady exhibits a very marked reaction to her pain…few signs are forthcoming and her whole
attitude displays many features of a hysterical reaction’- Wilson, 1945-49
‘There would seem to have been further deterioration in a personality of poor quality so that there
is hysterical motivation in his disabilities’- Watson, 1955-59
The term hysteria is therefore being used in two ways. Firstly, as a disorder doctors were willing and
able to diagnose using positive signs, and secondly as a hysterical trait, a label applied in judgement
of personality. This duality echoed psychoanalytic thinking of the time. ‘Hysteria’ was originally used
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to describe what would now be called a functional neurological symptom, but then morphed into
describing underlying character traits believed to be aetiologically significant. As theories developed
in the early twentieth century, it followed that one could have ‘hysteria’ on the basis of character traits
alone, and the presence of neurological symptoms became inessential. Such oscillations between
physical symptom and underlying character traits were not unique to psychoanalytic theory and have
been repeated throughout the history of the disorder. This observation must also be placed in the
context of contemporary medical practice, in which character judgements were more common across
all disorders. Such an approach was also specifically promoted in medical texts. Russell Brain’s
Diseases of the Nervous System from 1955, one of the few textbooks that allowed hysteria into its
contents page, integrated the two uses of hysterical and the aetiology of the condition is described
thus:
‘In hysteria the… reaction exhibited by the patient is determined by the peculiar tendency of the
hysterical personality to mental dissociation’.
Another well-known textbook of the period (Practical Neurology by Brian Matthews) warns in the
treatment of hysteria that ‘Although the patients can be persuaded to abandon that particular
symptom, they do not thereby lose their immature personality’. Many other textbooks had no section
on functional neurological disorders, including Kinnier Wilson’s textbook Neurology from 1940,
although perhaps would have done had he lived to complete it.
Eliot Slater, psychiatrist to the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases in Queen Square, argued in
1965 that most patients with so-called ‘hysteria’, were actually suffering from undiagnosed organic
disease, missed by his neurological colleagues(Slater, 1965). This incurred a scathing riposte from
equally eminent neurologist Sir Francis Walshe, describing Slater as a demolitionist, who was merely
frustrated at failing to cure the condition(Walshe, 1965). Alastair Compston commented that Slater’s
theory received some credence, as ‘some patients with symptoms not obviously explained by organic
disease were indulged with extensive investigation, to make sure the Slater issue wasn’t present.’
However, putting aside their different views on misdiagnosis, Slater and Walshe agreed on the
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presence of the hysterical temperament. Slater commented that it was ‘arguable that the so-called
“hysterical” traits of personality are not misnamed’, whilst Walshe observed in the reply, “Perhaps the
French view on this- namely that exaggeration and lying are but one expression of the hysterical
personality, is nearer the mark”.
Clearly then, prevailing mid-twentieth century teaching endorsed a hysterical personality as part of
the patient’s diagnostic make-up, and it would appear in some cases this perception elicited a certain
attitude from the consultant:
‘She probably suffers from true epileptic attacks and is at the same time an inadequate and
psychopathic person. She seemed to be a very inadequate personality covered up with a thin
camouflage of aggressiveness’- Dott, 1940-44
‘The patient is vague, exceedingly dull-witted, and quite unable to give an accurate account of her
symptoms’- Lowe, 1950-54
‘We found this woman very resentful indeed’- Dott, 1950-54
However, this negativity is more notable by its absence overall, and there are many instances of
positive feelings towards patients with functional neurological disorders, for example someone with
‘patently functional’ forearm weakness is described as ‘very co-operative…good witness, intelligent’-
Maslowski, 1950-54. This negative attitude then, may not specifically refer to patients with ‘hysteria,
but merely evidence the greater freedom afforded to neurologists 70 years ago, as equally scathing
comments are directed at those with other diagnoses:
' I really do not feel very convinced…she is far too fat to begin with'- Dott, 1930-34
‘She is the daughter of a brewer and his harassed, unintelligent wife’- Dott, 1940-44
‘There is no doubt about her extremely neurotic and egotistical temperament…she makes herself and
other people unnecessarily miserable’- Dott, 1940-44
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In summary, although ‘hysteria’ was diagnosed on positive findings of inconsistency, neurologists of
this period also saw it as divergent, through its second definition as a state of being or of personality,
rather than a specific condition. Much of the language describing patients with ‘hysteria’ was by
modern standards, offensive, but that probably relates as much to the medical culture of the time as an
attitude towards ‘hysteria’.
‘Prescribe “the mixture” and never let her know what actual drugs you give her’- Management
So, once Dott’s department decided a patient had ‘hysteria’, or was simply a hysteric, what next? The
first decision would be communicating the diagnosis to the patient, and it seems in Edinburgh the
tendency was to remain tactfully reticent.
‘we explained to the patient that her condition was not…serious…and we advised her to try to pay
less attention to these symptoms’-Dott, 1940-44
‘It would be a mistake to …try to persuade her that it does not exist’-Dott, 1940-44
'Unwise to tell the patient that there is nothing wrong, that she must pull herself together etc. I find it
works much better to show some degree of credence…sympathise with it, say that symptoms are due
to rheumatism in the head or anything else that may appeal…and give benign and harmless
treatment'-Dott, 1930-34.
10
Figure 3. Norman Dott pictured in the 1960s (reprinted from (Rush and Shaw, 1990)
Certainly, there is no mention of ‘hysteria’, conversion, or functional being uttered, and likewise the
neurologists we spoke to would avoid confronting the patient with a formal diagnosis. Instead,
symptoms were put down to ‘stress’(Cull) or ‘emotion’ (Reynolds). Alastair Compston used the
phrase ‘the nerves are not broken but the messages just aren’t getting through’, and emphasised the
importance of avoiding confronting the patient with the diagnosis and ‘maintaining the charade’.
However, it was also vital to ‘resist investigation and discourage eternal rounds of referral in search of
the elusive diagnosis’. Charles Warlow comments that in the latter part of his career he would
diagnose a ‘functional’ problem, and use a stopped clock analogy, which has run out of battery, rather
than being structurally compromised. Pauline Monro described an individually tailored explanation,
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usually involving ‘reassurance that the nervous system was intact, but that the problem lay in how it
was being driven. This could be affected by emotion, stress, anxiety, being in an unacceptable
situation etc.’ Her approach to treatment emphasised ‘an acceptable route to recovery without losing
face, whether it be by physiotherapy, changing the situation or dealing with the emotion. Crucially,
the concept of ’face-saving’ appears to have been a key component of the treatment approach, in both
our archival and oral research. Face-saving is arguably something that would not be so associated
with recognised neurological conditions. It tends to suggest a disorder associated with shame or one in
which difficult aspects of management need to be covered up.
Frank and potentially inflammatory discussions avoided, it is striking that the Dott archive often
recorded attempts made to help or treat the patient, in contrast to the quite common practice, even
today, of excluding organic disease and discharging the patient(Friedman and LaFrance, 2010). In the
following example of the ‘benign and harmless treatment’ hypothesized above, Dott instructs the GP
of a middle-aged woman with recurrent left-sided arm and facial pains:
‘I told her we would inform you of the “special medicines” that would help her kind of pain most…
prescribe “the mixture” and never let her know what actual drugs you give her. I think aspirin-
suitably flavoured and in moderate dosage- might well be your mainstay’-Dott, 1955-59
This is the only instance of such an explicit placebo-based approach in the archive, something that is
discouraged by most contemporary authors on the topic(Rommelfanger, 2016). More commonly,
prognostic discussions would be based on reassurance rather than trickery:
‘It has been impressed on (X) very strongly that there is no abnormality present and that the pain
will die away’- Watson, 1945-49
‘She should be firmly told that she is now a very healthy woman and that no untoward symptoms are
expected’- Hermann, 1955-59
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‘when the patient left she said “so, you have nothing else to suggest but that I wait for another
haemorrhage”, and indeed I had nothing more to suggest, but…that she would have to wait a very
long time indeed’- Dott, 1950-54
For 48% of the cases examined, this was the outcome. Reassurance that there was nothing
neurological wrong, certainly nothing operable, and that the symptoms would pass. However, 42%
were referred to psychiatry, showing a more constructive approach with genuine hope for, and
importance placed upon, the success of psychiatric methods:
‘No treatment… should be carried out without expert psychiatric opinion and guidance’- Sedzimir,
1945-49
‘Any improvement that can be achieved for her will be along psycho-therapeutic lines’- Dott, 1940-
44
‘I should think that the psychiatric management of this patient is far more important than the
treatment of her epilepsy’-Dott, 1940-44
‘Even if there is an organic aspect to this case, I believe she would be best treated in the mental
hospital’- Hermann, 1955-59
. The Dott archive doesn’t provide much information on the nature of the psychiatric treatment
offered. Patients were seen at the psychiatric hospital and not apparently within Dott’s unit. Referrals
were often made to Professor (later Sir) David Kennedy Henderson, later president of the Royal
College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and co-director of a brain injury unit with Dott in Bangour near
Edinburgh during the Second World War(Pentland, 2015). We did not find evidence describing
Henderson's approach to the problem, although he was known to be heavily influenced by Adolf
Meyer's biopsychosocial theories. However, he was also an early adopter of practical approaches, in
particular occupational therapy to treatment in general. Some referrals went to Ronald Fairbairn, the
founder of object relations theory, who viewed hysteria as a consequence of internalising problems
within interpersonal relationships. An BMJ review article on ‘hysteria’ from the 1953 by Batchelor
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from Edinburgh indicates treatment with mixed methods including medication, psychoanalysis and
behavioural advice. Although the management of functional neurological disorder may not have
resided in the neurologist’s clinic, we can see here a conferment of respect towards it. Further
evidence of this exists in Dott’s files from the Bangour military hospital during World War II, just
outside Edinburgh. Of the 27 ‘hysteria’ patients his team saw during this period, 9 were discharged
from the armed forces, and 11 were sent to psychiatric hospitals. We found no evidence of the use of
physical rehabilitation techniques, which in recent years have found popularity again, and an evidence
base, for functional motor disorders(Nielsen et al., 2017).
Our interviewees approach to management was varied. While they were practising, both Roger Cull
and Ted Reynolds saw the treatment of functional neurological disorders, as psychiatry’s
responsibility. Cull describes his method as follows: ‘if they didn't have an organic illness, we did try
to offload them to the psychiatry service as much as possible…my first line was mainly to the liaison
psychiatrists, who might then refer them onto the clinical psychologists.’ Reynolds commented: ‘the
patients were shunted out of neurological beds, either back to their original referral centre…or
transferred to the department of psychological medicine…there were several well-trained
neuropsychiatrists to whom I could turn.’ Alastair Compston and Charles Warlow took another view,
Compston believing that ‘neurology has a better understanding of the complex dynamic of
personality, circumstance, function, structure and therapy.’ If he encountered a patient distraught by
their situation and who “appeared to want a way out but could not do this”, then he would admit them
away from the place where the problem had arisen so that they could get better but maintain dignity,
gently coaxing them forwards on a daily basis with sympathetic physiotherapy (if they had movement
disorder or paralysis) by encouragement and maintaining a trajectory of daily improvement”. Charles
Warlow pointed out that ‘there was no point referring to psychiatry’, as it was ‘extremely common’
for them to be sent back, psychiatric pathology excluded. Interestingly, Pauline Monro remarked ‘I
think the psychiatrists trusted me to have already looked for organic brain disease before I referred
them so no, no one ever referred back to me’. Ultimately though, she would not refer to psychiatry
unless ‘the patient agreed and felt they needed psychiatric input.’
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Perhaps this inconsistency is inevitable. Firstly, psychiatry was undergoing considerable change as
predominantly psychoanalytic theories gave way to operationalization of disease, and the rise of
social psychiatry. The sub-specialty of liaison psychiatry had its infancy during this period, and
neurologists with positive experiences were referring to departments pioneering modern consultation-
liaison psychiatry. Secondly, our study of contemporaneous neurological textbooks shows even less
guidance for treatment than diagnosis. From three mid-twentieth-century neurology textbooks (out of
seven examined) with a section on hysteria, only one had a subheading for management (Brain’s
Diseases of the Nervous System, 1955), simply advising that the ‘patient may be assured…that it is
due to a faulty mental habit.’ Psychological methods are remarked upon only in so far as they ‘are
often rendered difficult by lack of intelligence or by resistance in the patient.’ This futility was seldom
seen in the Dott case files (shown below), where there appeared greater willingness to treat it as a
condition.
‘I suggested…a visit to the castle…the ideal treatment would be psychotherapeutic…can one
change the leopard's spots? Certainly not in the case of a confirmed hypochondriacal leopardess of
(X) years. I would not advise attempting it.’- Dott, 1955-59
‘No psychotherapy has been offered; this, however, is the only treatment the patient should have
though one is doubtful of the benefit it can offer’- Hermann, 1960-64
Our analysis is, inevitably, only a snapshot of one service. We didn’t have access to psychiatric
records or to clinical practice elsewhere including in the USA. The management of ‘hysteria’ in the
mid-twentieth century was simply not seen as the role of a neurologist or neurosurgeon. Dott’s
department however, show that despite negative attitudes one might infer from the quotes, patients
were not always discarded as having a ‘faulty mental habit’, and were often referred to a department
that it was felt would have more success. Ultimately the referral rate of 42% to psychiatry, is higher
than it is today for similar patients in most neurological settings.
Conclusion
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These raw quotes, never designed for public consumption, make some of the attitudinal changes
medicine has undergone in the last 70 years painfully clear. It is hoped that doctors of today are less
willingly negative about patients with functional neurological disorders, but even if they are, they are
unlikely to be so openly brazen in their judgement of their patients. Negative attitudes do persist
towards patients with these disorder, most visibly in anonymous online forums for doctors (Tolchin et
al., 2016). The direct and more judgemental approach of the past, however, does have the scholarly
advantage of providing the reader with a more complete picture of doctors’ attitudes to their patients,
which might be lacking in modern correspondence.
Although the ambivalence that today’s doctors still show towards patients with a functional
neurological disorder was undoubtedly present in Dott’s department, the high proportion of
psychiatric referrals suggests legitimacy and a pragmatic approach to the condition, and an
interdisciplinary approach that arguably is in many places still insufficiently adopted by today’s
clinicians. The professional ownership of functional neurological disorders has been the topic of much
debate, even within this paper, and whilst both neurologists and psychiatrists have undertaken its
management, patients have often ‘fallen between the cracks’ of both specialties. A recent renaissance
of interest, typified by the Functional Neurological Disorder Society (www.fndsociety.org) promotes
an international and multidisciplinary approach. But it is perhaps chastising to consider how little has
improved in many quarters for patients with FND.
Acknowledgements. We are grateful to Alastair Compston, Pauline Monro, Ted Reynolds, Charles
Warlow, and Roger Cull for giving their time to be interviewed for this article. We also thank all
those in the Lothian Health Services Archive and Wellcome Trust for cataloguing the Dott archive
https://collections.ed.ac.uk/lhsacasenotes/people.
The authors report no competing interests.
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