Neither Physicians Nor Surgeons: Whither Neuropathological Skill in Post-war England?

Abstract

Neuropathologists constituted a small field in post-war England, perched between neurology, psychiatry, neurosurgery and pathology, but recognised as a discrete field of expertise. Despite this recognition, the success of the neighbouring fields of neurosurgery, psychosurgery and neurobiology, and the consultant status granted to pathologists in the National Health Service, neuropathologists struggled to stabilise their field. A discourse of skills, acquired and acquirable, became central to their attempts to situate the field in relation to surgeons' handicraft, physicians' diagnostic acumen and the technologies of the biological sciences.