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Wallace B. Mendelson M.D.

About

Wallace Mendelson, M.D., is a Professor of Psychiatry and Clinical Pharmacology (ret) at the University of Chicago. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a past president of the Sleep Research Society. His most recent books include The Battle over the Butterflies of the Soul: Camillo Golgi, Santiago Ramon y Cajal and the Birth of Neuroscience; The Psychoanalyst and the Nazi Nobelist: The Curious Story of Sigmund Freud and Julius Wagner-Jauregg; Fragile Brilliance: The Troubled Lives of Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, and Other Great Authors; Molecules, Madness and Malaria: How Victorian Fabric Dyes Evolved Into Modern Medicines for Mental Illness and Infectious Disease; and The Curious History of Medicines in Psychiatry.

Books by Wallace B. Mendelson M.D.
Recent Posts
Cover of Contes Grotesques, from a painting by Odilon Redon, published by Paul Ollendorff, 1882
A Suicide Prepared for a Long Time
Experts have pondered the ever-increasing toll of drinking in Edgar Allan Poe's life and the possibility that his symptoms may have resulted from other substances.
The Troubled Life of Edgar Allan Poe

How Edgar Allan Poe came to exemplify the brilliant, but troubled and alcoholic, writer.

How Edgar Allan Poe came to exemplify the brilliant, but troubled and alcoholic, writer.

Freud's couch, in Freud Museum, London, 2018
Sigmund Freud and the Nazi Nobelist

Sigmund Freud and Julius Wagner-Jauregg recognized each other's brilliance, though they disagreed strongly on where it had led them.

Sigmund Freud and Julius Wagner-Jauregg recognized each other's brilliance, though they disagreed strongly on where it had led them.

Graz, where Wagner-Jauregg studied cretinism and goiter.
The Psychiatrist Who Gave His Patients Malaria

Julius Wagner-Jauregg, the first psychiatrist to win the Nobel Prize and a friend of Sigmund Freud, created febrile treatment for the psychoses of neurosyphilis.

Julius Wagner-Jauregg, the first psychiatrist to win the Nobel Prize and a friend of Sigmund Freud, created febrile treatment for the psychoses of neurosyphilis.

Cajal drawing of nervous system tissue.
Santiago Ramón y Cajal and the Neuron Doctrine

Personality qualities as well as scientific findings contributed to the decades-long debate between Santiago Ramón y Cajal and Camillo Golgi, which gave birth to neuroscience.

Personality qualities as well as scientific findings contributed to the decades-long debate between Santiago Ramón y Cajal and Camillo Golgi, which gave birth to neuroscience.

The Relation Between Neuroscience and War

The roots of neuroscience are deeply embedded in World War II, and understanding it is aided by looking at how its early leaders affected, and were affected, by it.

The roots of neuroscience are deeply embedded in World War II, and understanding it is aided by looking at how its early leaders affected, and were affected, by it.

Hippocampal neurons isualized by Golgi, 1885.
The Story of Camillo Golgi and the Visualization of the Neuron

Camillo Golgi held on to the belief that the brain is comprised of one vast reticulum, long after it was established that neurons are the building blocks of the nervous system.

Camillo Golgi held on to the belief that the brain is comprised of one vast reticulum, long after it was established that neurons are the building blocks of the nervous system.