As a celebrated neurologist, Doctor Andrew Lees has been collecting and interpreting medical data for decades, and as an accomplished author and frequent tweeter, he has developed a keen ability to capture his thoughts succinctly. Now, in this book, he documents a career's worth of insights by reformulating his most profound tweets into poetic form. The aphorisms collected here touch on a host of related topics, from the right approach to diagnosis to the importance of a "soulful neurology" in the art of healing. They will interest everyone: the suffering patient, the young doctor or nurse, maybe even a health care bureaucrat. Neurological Birdsong is the beautiful expression of one doctor's wisdom.A.J. Lees has written many books, including Brainspotting: Adventures in Neurology and Mentored by a Madman: The William Burroughs Experiment. He takes long walks in London and continues his tweeting career @AJLees.

Neurological Birdsong

Literature & Fiction

Lees, A.J.

Poetry

Mirabeau Press

A fascinating account by one of the world's leading neurologists of the profound influence of William Burroughs on his medical career. Lees relates how Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch and troubled drug addict, inspired him to discover a ground-breaking treatment for Parkinson's Disease. Lees journeys to the Amazonian rainforest in search of cures, and through self-experimentation seeks to find the answers his patients crave. He enters a powerful plea for the return of imagination to medical research.

Mentored by a Madman: The William Burroughs Experiment

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

Notting Hill Editions

A famed British neurologist embarks on an expedition in Brazil to follow the trail of Percy Fawcett, an occult-obsessed explorer who went missing in the Amazon rainforest and was the subject of the 2016 film The Lost City of Z. As a boy growing up near Liverpool in the 1950s, Andrew Lees would visit the docks with his father to watch the ships from Brazil unload their exotic cargo of coffee, cotton bales, molasses, and cocoa. One day, his father gave him a dog-eared book called Exploration Fawcett. The book told the true story of Lieutenant Colonel Percy Fawcett, a British explorer who in 1925 had gone in search of a lost city in the Amazon and never returned. The riveting story of Fawcett's encounters with deadly animals and hostile tribes, his mission to discover an Atlantean civilization, and the many who lost their own lives when they went in search of him inspired the young Lees to believe that there were still earthly places where one could "fall off the edge." Years later, after becoming a successful neurologist, Lees set off in search of the mysterious figure of Fawcett. What he found exceeded his wildest imaginings. With access to the cache of "Secret Papers," Lees discovered that Fawcett's quest was far stranger than searching for a lost city. There was a "greater mission," one that involved the occult and a belief in a community of evolved beings living in a hidden parallel plane in the Mato Grosso. Lees traveled to Manaus in Fawcett's footsteps. After a time-bending psychedelic experience in the forest, he understood that his yearning for the imaginary Brazil of his boyhood, like Fawcett's search for an earthly paradise, was a nostalgia for what never was. Part travelogue, part memoir, Lees paints a portrait of an elusive Brazil, and of a flawed explorer whose doomed mission ruined lives.

Brazil That Never Was

History

World

For fans of Oliver Sacks and Henry Marsh, a glimpse into the fascinating world of modern neurology by a leading expert in the field. As a trainee doctor, A. J. Lees was enthralled by his mentors: esteemed neurologists who combined the precision of mathematicians, the scrupulosity of entomologists, and the solemnity of undertakers in their diagnoses and treatments. For them, there was no such thing as an unexplained symptom or psychosomatic problem--no difficult cases, just interesting ones--and it was only a matter of time before all disorders of the brain would be understood in terms of anatomical, electrical, and chemical connections. Today, this kind of "holistic neurology" is on the brink of extinction as a slavish adherence to protocols and algorithms--plus a worship of machines--runs the risk of destroying the key foundational clinical skills of listening, observation, and imagination that have been at the heart of the discipline for more than 150 years. In this series of brilliant, insightful, and autobiographical essays, Lees takes us on a kind of Sherlock Holmes tour of neurology, giving the reader insight into--and a defense of--the deep analytical tools that the best neurologists still rely on to diagnose patients: to heal minds and to fix brains.

Brainspotting: Adventures in Neurology

Arts & Literature

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