Medically Unexplained Symptoms: A Brain-Centered Approach - Paperback

by Robert W. Baloh (Author)

Introduction

Chapter 1. Overview of Medically Unexplained Symptoms

Pain

Brain flaws

Fear

Anxiety

Dizziness

Stress

Fatigue

Diagnostic uncertainty

Chapter 2. Early ideas on hysteria

Hysteria and female sexuality

Bizarre behaviors

Hysteria and the occult

Nerves

Hysteria, a nervous disorder

Early treatments of hysteria

Spinal irritation and the spinal reflex theory

The attack on the female genitalia

Hysteria and fasting girls

Chapter 3. The Golden age of Hysteria

Briquet's syndrome

Charcot and his hysterical circus

Hysteria and hypnosis

Borderlands of hypnosis

Nature or nurture

Ideas about hysteria evolve

Neurasthenia and neurosis

S Weir Mitchell and the Civil War

The Rest Cure

S Weir Mitchell, the enigma

Nerve doctors

Evolution and the brain

Chapter 4. Psychosomatic illness in the 20th Century

Freud, the earl

Back Jacket

Despite the rapid advances in medical science, the majority of people who visit a doctor have medically unexplained symptoms (MUS), symptoms that remain a mystery despite extensive diagnostic studies. The most common MUS are back pain, abdominal pain, headache, fatigue, and dizziness. This book addresses the obstacles of managing people with MUS in our modern day society from both a historical and contemporary perspective.

Most MUS are psychosomatic in origin, caused by a complex interaction between nature and nurture, between biological and psychosocial factors. Psychosomatic symptoms are as real and as severe as the symptoms associated with structural damage to the brain. Unique and concise, the book explores the biological and psychosocial mechanisms, the clinical features, and current and future treatments of common MUS.

Exploring the unsolved in an accessible manner, Medically Unexplained Symptoms invokes the methodologies of medical science, history, and sociology to investigate how brain flaws can lead to debilitating symptoms.

Author Biography

Robert W. Baloh MD

Distinguished Professor of Neurology

David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

Los Angeles, CA