Dr H C Bastian, scientific Jekyll and Hyde

The neurological library of S A Kinnier Wilson, now in the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, contains two books by Henry Charlton Bastian. Various forms of hysterical or functional paralysis (1893) is inscribed “To Dr Wilson by the Author, July 1906”. Wilson was Bastianʹs house-physician at the time. The second book, given to Wilsonʹs son by Bastianʹs daughter in 1940, is a lavishly illustrated tome, Studies in heterogenesis (1903). The two books testify to a scientific Jekyll and Hyde-one of the founders of neurology and a wildly unorthodox biologist.