22 R ?VOLUME 8 NUMBER 1 ?MARCH/APRIL 2008 Neurology and Literature R oald Dahl (1916-1990) is best known as an author of children’s books, although his oeuvre also extends to other works, including screenplays, ghost tales and novels. It may therefore seem surprising at first sight that he might have made any contributions to neurology. However, in the second volume of his autobiography, Going solo (1986), he declares “All my life I have taken an intense and inquisitive interest in every form of medicine”, perhaps in part because of the head injury he suffered as a pilot in World War 2. Recovering in Alexandria, he was blind for some time, and reports “Both my senses of smell and of hearing had e very acute since my blindness, and I had developed an instinctive habit of translating sounds and scents into a coloured mental picture”. This account suggests the phenomenon of hyperpilaphesie, but not of true (“strong”) synaesthesia. Dahl’s book e’s marvellous medicine (1981) con- tains the epigraph (in the hardback edition, but not in subsequent paper- back editions) “This book is for doc- tors everywhere”. This bold statement is not further elaborated upon, but cer- tainly the book may be read as a salu- tary lesson about the grave conse- quences of unregulated experimenta- tion in clinical pharmacology. The author advises readers not to try the recipes reported in the book.
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