"Dr. Harold Klawans examines people ranging from the woman suffering from "painful foot and moving toe syndrome," whose case reminds him that we were once reptiles with brains at the bases of our spines, to the farmer from Indiana who didn't have mad cow disease, but something similar, caused by a protein-like pathogen that man himself has helped nurture by removing the pressures of natural selection from his herds of livestock and from his own communities. As Klawans notes, "almost all of man's recent 'evolution' takes place outside the body ... because man can alter his environment in ways that no other species ever could." In the best tradition of clinical tales, this physician storyteller weaves into his patient narratives insights into the evolutionary legacy encoded in the brain and the remarkable capacity of the human mind."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

During the neurologist Harold Klawan's lifetime, patients came to him from all over America, exhibiting a huge array of troubles, all of which boiled down to one complaint: something was wrong with their brains. As a sympathetic brain detective, Klawans deduced a great deal from his patients, not only about the immediate causes of their ailments but also about the evolutionary underpinnings of their behaviour.