Neurology and the clinical historian

If clinicians are considered the historians, and patients the story-tellers, the approach to the task of taking ‘the’ history can usefully be informed by the work of academic historians who make explicit the importance of the historian’s own views and expertise in their writing of history, and of the ways in which they consult and scrutinize sources. For any bedside diagnosticians – depicted here as clinical historians – their possible sources include the patient, relatives and witnesses, and other healthcare professionals.