Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 1: Introduction Alzheimer’s disease: the twenty-first-century first-world scare Dementia in history Methodology: literature and science Overview Part I: The Organic Paradigm 2: From brain inspection to cell death The Forsyte Saga: the cultural image of dementia in the fin-de-siècle family novel Dementia and memory loss in science, medicine and literature before 1880 Auguste D. and Johann F.: Alzheimer’s clinical cases and histological research Degeneration: the old and new narrative of loss and decline in medico-scientific literature on dementia and Alzheimer’s disease There Were No Windows: the patient’s illness experience in the modernist novel Part II: The Ageing Perspective 3: Culture shapes politics shapes science Researching old age: from medical science to old-age psychiatry At The Jerusalem: dementia defines the elderly in 1960s’ new realist fiction 4: The loss of self in healthcare and cultural discourse Caregiver guides: helpers in the face of loss and decline Out of Mind: the postmodern novel delves into the mind of the patient Part III: The Cognitive Picture 5: The narrative of loss in a growing biomedical and literary marketplace of Alzheimer’s disease Neurodegeneration: the biochemical narrative of lost molecules, pathways and communication On genes and genealogy: the patient as specimen, carrier and type in research and popular science Death in Slow Motion: past identities, lost plots and old age in caregiver life-writing 6: Neuro-technologies and narrative examine the failing mind The visual exploration of the brain and fascination with the mind The Dying of the Light: detective fiction claims back patient authority Who Will I Be When I Die?: patient life-writing around the year 2000 Part IV: The Whole-Person Prospects 7: The dichotomy of Alzheimer’s disease Immunization hope and hype: the patient as non-responder La guardiana di Ulisse: the patient beyond forgetting in children’s literature and adult fiction of the new century Alzheimer mon amour: healthcare changes and patient personality in contemporary caregiver memoirs We Are Not Ourselves: the cultural image of Alzheimer’s disease in the twenty-first-century Bildungsroman 8: Conclusion Notes Glossary Bibliography

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Explores the interplay of scientific and cultural texts in our changing understanding and treatment of dementia across the 20th century.

About the Author

Martina Zimmermann teaches at the University of Warwick, UK, and is Privatdozentin at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. She trained as a pharmaceutical scientist and specialized in neuropharmacology before moving into research in the health humanities. She is the author of The Poetics and Politics of Alzheimer's Disease Life-Writing (2017). She has recently been awarded a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship with which she returns to the Department of English at King’s College London, where this monograph had been researched.

Reviews

Zimmermann’s analysis of literature, medicine, and science addressing dementia and caregiving in diverse cultures is a reminder of the importance of cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural knowledge for social workers.
*Affilia: Feminist Inquiry in Social Work*

Martina Zimmermann’s The Diseased Brain and the Failing Mind summarizes the preoccupation of Western culture with dementia as defining not only the aging process but also the very essence of the identity. Zimmermann, a trained neuro-scientist and a sharp-eyed literary critic, illustrates how scientific models of mind and brain, of neural networks and brain chemistry, reflect the cultural assumptions of how mind, brain, and body are believed to function. Her close reading of the literary reflections on aging and dementia from the Edwardians to contemporary film shows that science is as often indebted to cultural paradigms as cultural paradigms reflect scientific assumptions. If you still believe that playing Sudoku will prevent you from developing Alzheimer’s perhaps you should better spend your time reading this book!
*Sander L. Gilman, Distinguished Professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences, Emory University, USA*