It’s no secret that the human brain is a complex organ whose role is the control center for emotion, memory, touch, vision, motor skills, and every process that regulates the body. Weighing about three pounds, this organ is made up of fat, water, carbohydrates, salts and proteins, not to mention a vast network of nerves, glial cells and blood vessels.
For humanity (and the medical profession), being able to diagnose issues or diseases of the brain is no straightforward matter. Unlike a broken toe or bruised limb, it’s not particularly easy to “point where it hurts” when the organ in question directs motion, generates speech, and produces awareness. To heal the brain requires more than just book knowledge of how it functions, which is what makes Reaching Down the Rabbit Hole, written by Dr. Allan Ropper and Brian Burrell, a fascinating read on the neurological complexity of brain issues.
In the book, the authors take readers behind the scenes at Harvard Medical School’s neurology unit to show Dr Ropper’s diagnostic acumen when faced with neurological issues. With the help of his co-author (Burrell), readers get to see Ropper’s clinical work in a very busy professional setting, where the dialogue is a mix of verbatim (70 percent), recollections (20 percent) and extrapolated (10 percent) stories. In some cases, the case histories are from Dr Ropper’s colleagues.
True Stories
What draws readers such as Tarek Saadi – an avid reader who also has an interest in matters of psychology and the brain from a consulting perspective – is that the stories are a mix of personal details, clinically relevant insights, and observations that also take into account the impact of Dr Ropper’s colleagues and the work environment. The book has an energetic tempo to it and the clinical wisdom is something to be appreciated.
As a distinguished neurologist at Harvard Medical School, Dr Ropper has interesting stories to tell. The book accomplishes this by painting him as an immensely talented professional, one who emerges as the hero of the moment with every anecdote, but not in a boastful way. In a way, the book looks to back up the long argument of observation being a more reliable diagnostic than new technology. However, it also does so against the paradox that the means through which patients explain themselves (using their brains) is often unreliable in treating neurological diseases.