The Greatest Canadian

Willy must have gotten a big return on his taxes this year

                                     Nightrider

Wilder Graves Penfield
Mapping the Brain 1891-1976

Although Wilder Penfield was born in the United States, completed his undergraduate education there and in England, served during World War I in France, qualified as a medical doctor and practised in the United States and did not come to Canada until he was 37 years old, he was later celebrated as “the greatest living Canadian.” The unprecedented esteem he enjoyed in Canada resulted both from his renown as a brain surgeon of unsurpassed skill and from recognition of his unique contributions to Canadian life as founder and director of the world-famous Montreal Neurological Institute.

Penfield was born in Spokane, Washington, on January 26, 1891, the son of a medical doctor. He moved with his mother to Hudson, Wisconsin, when she and his father separated in 1899. There he graduated, at the head of his class, from Galahad School, a private institution which his mother and three young teachers had organized. Upon graduation he went to Princeton University and completed his bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1913. He was chosen“ Best All-round Man” by his classmates and later won a Rhodes Scholarship.

In January 1915, as a member of Merton College, Oxford, he enrolled in courses that would assist in his completion of a medical degree at Johns Hopkins University which he planned to enter on his return to the United States. He was assisted in arranging this by Sir William Osler, Oxford’s Regius Professor of Medicine who had concluded that Penfield could become a good doctor. Anxious to help, Osler invited the young American to accompany him on medical consultations around England from one hospital to another. Through his association with Osler, Penfield came to regard medicine as mankind's most noble calling.

Sir Charles Sherrington, the distinguished English physiologist, noted for his experiments that established modern understanding of integrated nervous functions, also became a primary influence on Penfield. Through Sherrington’s lectures Penfield was introduced to the study of the brain. He also completed courses in histology, pharmacology, bacteriology, and chemistry.

During the Christmas break from studies at Oxford, in late 1915, Penfield worked briefly as a volunteer in a Red Cross hospital. When he was returning to this Red Cross work in late March 1916, after the winter term at Oxford, the ship on which he was travelling was torpedoed in the English Channel. Although he was erroneously reported dead and his obituary was published in an American newspaper, he survived the torpedo attack but spent three weeks in a hospital in Dover, England, and several weeks recuperating at Sir William Osler’s residence in Oxford.

On his return to the United States, Penfield was given academic credit for his science studies at Oxford and embarked upon his final years of medical study at Johns Hopkins. In April 1917, however, the United States declared war on Germany and began to enter fully into the First World War. The following June, Penfield married Helen Kermott. Several weeks later he and his wife took a ship to France where they both worked in an American Red Cross hospital in Paris.

In late 1917 they returned to the United States. Penfield completed his medical studies at Johns Hopkins and received his medical degree. After having served his internship in Boston and later having assisted Dr. Harvey Cushing, one of the most gifted brain surgeons in the United States, he returned to Oxford for advanced studies in clinical neurology and neurosurgery. While in England he developed a special interest in epilepsy. When this period of his advanced research was finished successfully, Penfield and his family, which by this time included two children, returned to the U.S..

He accepted a position at New York’s Presbyterian Hospital. Through his work there and at the New York Neurological Institute, his interest in epilepsy was deepened. In his effort to advance his knowledge and ability in his areas of specialization, Penfield studied firsthand the methods used by specialists in Spain, Germany, and elsewhere.

In 1928, with William Vernon Cone, his primary associate in neurosurgery, Penfield accepted an appointment at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. There he developed a good working relationship with Dr. Colin K. Russel, a well-established neurologist who supported Penfield in his surgical treatment of epilepsy. Penfield began to make plans for an institute for the study and, he hoped, the eventual cure of epilepsy and other brain diseases.

Founder and first director of the world-famous Montreal Neurological Institute, Dr. Wilder G. Penfield believed that the brain represented the most important unexplored field in the whole of science [Davidson, PAC/PA 138693].

Although his initial application to the Rockefeller Foundation was not successful, by 1934 the Foundation finally agreed to join with the Province of Quebec, the City of Montreal, and private donors to help financially in the implementation of Penfield’s plan to establish the Montreal Neurological Institute. Gradually the Institute, the first of its kind in the world, emerged as a centre of outstanding research, teaching, and treatment. Surgeons and scientists worked closely together, drawing on new research findings to improve methods of diagnosis and surgical treatment. Like his celebrated mentor, Osler, Penfield worked with great skill and concentration as he constantly sought to find new means to cure epilepsy and related dysfunctions.

In collaboration with his colleagues, Penfield developed a new surgical approach that became known as the “Montreal Procedure.”

Relying on a local anaesthetic, Penfield carefully examined the exposed brain tissue of an aware patient. As the patient described what he or she was feeling, Penfield probed sections of the brain. Using this method, he was able to identify, in many cases, the precise location of the damaged brain tissues that were causing epileptic seizures. As he did this he was able to map areas of the brain in terms of their respective functions.

Through his research Penfield developed an interest in the connection between the brain and the human mind. His research concerning epilepsy led him to study the cerebral cortex, that part of the brain in which are centred all motor, sensory functions and impulses that give rise to our variety of thoughts and feelings. As he carefully probed the brain, he found that careful administration of a mild electric shock to one of the temporal lobes could, miraculously it seemed, cause the patient to recall precise personal experiences that had long been forgotten. By this means he was able to locate the accumulated store of memory of past events and the emotions, sensations, and thoughts to which the events had given rise. Penfield’s research into the structure and function of the brain, it might be added, was guided by his desire to discover a physical basis for the philosophical belief in the human soul.

Penfield performed more operations for epilepsy than any other surgeon in the world to that time. Unprecedented success attended his efforts. Half his patients were cured of seizures. His outstanding record of accomplishments as a neurologist and neurosurgeon later brought him many of the world’s highest honours. His many scientific writings were accepted as definitive statements in their field. During the Second World War he was a member of a surgical mission in Moscow. Subsequently he went on a similar mission to China.

Like Osler, he devoted much time during the last two decades of his life to writing and publication of his work. His writings on the relationship between science and religion reflected his insight as a renowned scientist and dedicated humanitarian with a sincere belief in God. He served as the first president of the Vanier Institute of the Family. He vigorously advocated early second language training for children and argued convincingly that “the child who hears a second language very early has a great advantage in many aspects of education and life.”

Penfield was particularly concerned about the future of Canada. In an address, delivered in French to L’Institut Canadien du Quebec on November 27, 1967, he stated: “There is a background of change that threatens us in Quebec and in Canada.... Straight ahead along the great highroad of cooperation, destiny and greatness beckon. This is the road that we should choose.”

As his life neared its end, Penfield returned to the deepest subjects that had exercised his mind in all his endeavours. In 1975, in The Mystery of the Mind, he set out his final views on the relationship between the human brain and the human mind. No Man Alone, his autobiography covering the period 1891 to 1934, was published in 1971.

Penfield died on April 5, 1976, revered by the nation he had served for nearly fifty years.

                                     Nightrider

I hear the birds. churping... Watching a really good hot flick.. Have Sat,Sun off...

Nightrider.. do you download any music and such??? I have limewire...Another reason I'm still up....

The sun isn't up yet.. why do the birds get up so early??? to get the worms????

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And don't you forget it