Many undergraduates who have their first contact with research or scientific initiation
may end up forming a misconception of what the profession really is. This occurs because,
when participating in these programs, they are usually taken directly into the day-to-day
research, which, as a rule, involves repetitive and monotonous activities. The initial
stages of discovery, the awakening of curiosity, or the interest in answering questions,
which are the pillars of science and the main motivators of researchers and scientists,
are usually “skipped” or ignored.
Added to this, there is still a strong financial aspect involved in the vocation for
research. Recently, the University of New York (NYU) stated that it would exempt medical
students from tuition for the first year of the course. The measure, according to
the Board of Directors, is an attempt to reduce the debts that students accumulate
throughout the course, which end up influencing the choice of more profitable specialties
to the detriment of the vocation itself, and a reflection of this, still according
to the university administrators, is the ever-decreasing number of students opting
for specialties such as Family Medicine, or even scientific research (masters and
doctorates).[1]
Certainly, these situations do not occur only in developed countries. Latin-American
countries like Brazil have shown the same problem, with a low number of researchers
in the medical field. The last study on medical demography in Brazil was conducted
in 2018 by Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo (FMUSP, in Portuguese),
and it showed that only 0.5% of public-university medical graduates, and 0.3% of private-university
graduates, wish to follow a career in research.[2]
In addition, the existence of numerous academic leagues in the different medical fields[3] ends up directing the students in a pre-maturation way to the medical specialty
itself, because they are mostly focused on clinical activities, being present at surgeries
etc., without opportunizing that the academic knows and or evaluates first its vocations
in research or teaching.
In this context, a question becomes more present: What to do to arouse interest in
a career in neuroscience research, if the medical specializations (neurosurgery and
neurology) seem to be much more financially promising and much more present throughout
the undergraduate courses?
The book “The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as
Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery”, written by Sam Kean, addresses
historical and technical subjects regarding neurosurgery and neurosciences in general,
from the point of view of a professional science writer.
Sam Kean is also the author of other bestsellers that deal with the dissemination
of scientific knowledge. In 2009, he was a runner-up for the National Association
of Science Writers' Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award for best science writer under the
age of thirty.[4] In “The Tale of the Dueling…”, he tells stories that he finds curious and interesting
about brain functioning, neurosurgery and the evolution of the research in this field.
However, Sam Kean has a peculiar way of spreading science; his stories are dramatic,
and generate curiosity and the most varied emotions. It is not enough to say, for
example, how the first surgery was performed to prove the closed head injury, the
so-called contrecoup brain injury; the author instead takes the reader back to the
fifteenth century, to the afternoon when King Henry II decided to take part in a joust
that would cost him his life, and how this decision culminated in the meeting of two
of the greatest science and neurosurgery geniuses of the time: Andreas Vesalius and
Ambroise Paré (p. 36-43)4. The authors then describes with detail the research process that led to that surgery
and how this fact was extremely important for the advancement of research in the history
of the neurosciences.
Another example from the book is set during World War II, amid explosions and piercing
shots of surgical precision, when soldiers tried to look outside a trench, and, by
exposing their heads, made the skull the part of the body most susceptible to injuries
during the war. These are seemingly disconnected and irrelevant facts, but have converged
so that the mapping of the complex sensory cortexes of the human brain became possible
(p. 107-146)4.
Another emblematic example occurs when, rather than describing how the cannibalistic
habit of a particular tribe caused scientists to understand prions (Kuru disease),
the author takes the reader to the wilderness in the mountainous region of Papua New
Guinea, telling the intriguing discoveries and daily adventures of a neuroscience
pioneer: Carleton Gajdusek (p. 155-179)4.
Another example from the book tells the story of the assassination of a President
of the United States, which is related tothe discovery of chemical synapses (p. 61-75)4.
In yet another excerpt, a stuck slide may have led to the discovery of cortical maps,
with the scientist winning a Nobel Prize (p. 111ff.)4. These are only a few examples of the author's talent for capturing attention and
arousing curiosity and interest for the subject.
One cannot fail to mention that the book is based on deep and extensive historical
and academic research, with references to other books, scientific articles and images,
such as to the National Library of Medicine, The San Diego Brain Observatory, the
book “De Humani Corporis Fabrica”, by Andreas Vesalius, The death of Henry II of France
did not publish any Journal of Neurosurgery, among others.
The negative point observed was the general organization of the book, which in our
opinion could have been done in descending chronological order, as it would help the
reader form a clearer idea of how the historical evolution of the most important events
involving the neurosciences occurred, but this does not invalidate the importance
and quality of the book as a whole.
Thus, considering the decreasing number of medical students who declare their intention
to invest in a career in research, a branch of fundamental importance in this area
of knowledge, and considering that the act of arousing curiosity and pleasure for
answering questions are essential motivating pillars for any researcher, the importance
of this book as complementary literature in the field of medicine becomes clear, especially
due to the relaxed and engaging way in which it addresses the subjects, and can act
as a mitigator of the current discrepancies in relation to the intention vocational
training of these professionals after their formation.
Finally, it would not be risky to think that, even a fully-trained neurosurgeon with
many years of dedication to the profession, after reading this book, could even for
a moment enter into an internal duel (paraphrasing the title of the book) and imagine
a life as a neuroscientist.
