John Hughlings Jackson: A Historical Introduction

Abstract

John Hughlings Jackson (Figs. 1.1, 1.2) was born 150 years ago on 4 April 1835 at Green Hammerton in Yorkshire. He died on 7 October 1911 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery. Jackson’s contributions to neurology (Taylor 1931/32) were extraordinarily wide-ranging and had far-reaching influences on his contemporaries (Broadbent 1903; Ferrier 1912; Buzzard 1934; Harris 1935), and on those who followed him Despite this formative role in the establishment of clinical neurology as a specialty in its own right, his contributions in a broader sense to studies of the central nervous system were far less widely recognised in his own lifetime. Indeed, he received none of the honours, for example a knighthood, that were bestowed on so many of his less distinguished contemporaries. The reasons for this are not hard to find in his peculiarly private personality and, perhaps, in the convoluted style of his prose. Further, he seems not to have been interested in developing an extensive and fashionable private practice and consequently was less well known in London society than were many of his contemporaries.