Author Description

Tracy Putnam and H. Houston Merritt co-discovered the effectiveness of Dilantin in controlling epilepsy, a dramatic find that is still invaluable today. Now, in this engaging volume, eminent neurologist Lewis P. Rowland, MD, tells the unique story of these two key figures and their outstanding contributions to science. Rowland reveals that Putnam was a brilliant and imaginative experimentalist, but he clashed with others--including powerful neurosurgeons--and ended up dying in relative obscurity. Merritt was the practical one, an observer, fact-collector and recorder, a practitioner of what is now called "evidence-based medicine". From his early days Merritt was a popular and remarkable diagnostician, and went on to be one of the most influential neurologists in the United States, a man who trained a generation of neurologists. As Dr. Rowland recounts this dual biography, he also sheds light on the origins of modern neurology, drug development, the growth of neuroscience and clinical investigation, academic anti-Semitism, the difficult struggle to translate basic science into clinical practice, the need for controls in therapeutic trials, and many other issues.