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Dr Norman Geschwind, professor of neurology at the Harvard Medical School, Boston, and one of the great thinkers in American medicine, died suddenly in the autumn of 1984, at the age of 58 years.
Those of us who worked with Dr Geschwind savor memories of sparring with this intellectual heavyweight champion, who could pummel you without inflicting pain. By reading widely and deeply and by applying his critical, logical, questioning intellect to his observations at the bedside and at brain-cutting sessions, he made extraordinary research contributions without recourse to technology. Dr Geschwind helped to reestablish the value of individual case reports, and I will be so seditious as to echo his plea that they be published in prestigious journals.
The field of neuro-ophthalmology is indebted to Dr Geschwind for his clarification of the mechanisms underlying some so-called disorders of higher visual function. He showed that the aphasias, apraxias, agnosias, and