Defending the Cavewoman And OtherTales of Evolutionary Neurology
Harold Klawans, M.D.
The only thing more fascinating than the brain when it's working
correctly is the brain when it's not working correctly.
In Defending the Cavewoman (W.W. Norton & Co., 2000), Harold
Klawans, M.D., presents a collection of real-life medical cases in which
something goes awry in the delicate latticework of brain cells. Each
suspenseful case offers readers a peek into a different part of the
brain, from both contemporary and evolutionary points of view.
Meet Lucy, who was told she probably had a brain tumor, and came to
Klawans for a second opinion. Her major symptom: unexplained episodes of
unconsciousness. Her unusual symptom: Lucy detected an odor of burned
coffee for just a few seconds as each episode started. Nobody else
present smelled coffee, burned or otherwise.
The burning coffee smell in Lucy's head gave Klawans the first clue
that she may not be suffering from a brain tumor. "Here are ill-behaved
cells," he realized, "a telltale remnant of events that took place
decades earlier." Through careful questioning of Lucy's mother, Klawans
found more clues. The true diagnosis, he ultimately deduced, upas not a
brain tumor; Lucy had scarring from an oxygen insufficiency during her
breech birth. The damaged cells were responsible for both her seizures
and her perception that coffee was burning.
Though Klawans' book is created in the tradition of Oliver Sacks'
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, his prose is stiffer and his
cases somewhat less elegantly presented. Far worse, however, is the
author's attempt to cross the chasm from neurology to anthropology in
order to understand the evolutionary implications of his medical
cases.
For example, Klawans greatly misstates the contemporary
anthropological perspective on gender roles. Since at least the early
1960s, anthropologists have known through a variety of excellent field
studies that while early man hunted, the bulk of day-to-day subsistence
was provided by foraging, done primarily by women. But Klawans suggests
there are living anthropologists who would say that, having discovered
tools, "[Man] then pulled woman along behind him, perhaps not by the
hair, but certainly not as an equal partner in the ascent." This is an
image created by an author who doesn't understand what anthropologists
know about early hominid human subsistence.
The drama and intrigue of these medical stories and their
evolutionary implications ultimately predominate, however. It's hard to
remain remote as Klawans works to discover if surgery is feasible for
Lucy, and to not hold your breath as the young woman's brain is
surgically altered, extinguishing her seizures and emptying forever the
cup of burning coffee.
ILLUSTRATION (COLOR)
Brian Weiss is an anthropologist-turned-writer and a former editor
of PSYCHOLOGY TODAY.
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