"I could see, and yet, mon, I could na` see" : William Macewen, the agnosias, and brain surgery

Two little noticed cases in which William Macewen used symptoms of visual agnosia to plan brain surgery on the angular gyrus are reviewed and evaluated. Following a head injury, Macewen’s first patient had an immediate and severe visual object agnosia that lasted for about 2 weeks. After that he gradually became homicidal and depressed and it was for those symptoms that Macewen first saw him, some 11 months after the accident. From his examination, Macewen concluded that the agnosia clearly indicated a lesion in “the posterior portion of the operculum or in the angular gyrus.” When he removed parts of the internal table that had penetrated those structures the homicidal impulses disappeared. Macewen’s second patient was seen for a chronic middle ear infection and, although neither aphasic nor deaf, was ‘word deaf.’ Slightly later he became ‘psychically blind’ as well. Macewen suspected a cerebral abscess pressing on both the angular gyrus and the first temporal convolution. A large subdural abscess was found there and the symptoms disappeared after it was treated. The patients are discussed and Macewen’s positive results analysed in the historical context of the dispute over the proposed role of the angular gyrus as the visual centre.

Localisation and William Macewen`s early brain surgery part I: the controversy

Neurosurgery for the removal of brain tumours based on localising signs is usually dated from the 1884 operation by Bennett and Godlee. However, within weeks of that operation claims were made on behalf of William Macewen, the Glasgow surgeon, to have been the real pioneer of such surgery. According to Macewen's protagonists, he had conducted seven similar operations earlier than Bennett and Godlee and, in a notable 1888 address, Macewen described these seven pre-1884 cases and a number of others operated on after 1884. This paper, which is in two parts, contains an evaluation of the claims made for the priority of Macewen's pre-1884 operations. Part I deals mainly with Macewen's work in fields other than brain surgery that are relevant to it and sets out the facts of the controversy. It begins with a brief biography of Macewen, describes his pioneering work in antiseptic and aseptic surgery, his work on osteotomy and bone regeneration, and his use in brain surgery of the knowledge so gained. Part I concludes with an examination of the battle waged in the newspapers between Macewen's and Bennett's and Godlee's supporters, and of previously unpublished correspondence between Macewen himself, David Ferrier and Hughes Bennett. The primary records of the patients on whom Macewen operated, together with other materials relevant to the controversy, are examined in Part II.

A computational approach to the reconstruction of surface geometry from early temple superstructures

Recovering the control or implicit geometry underlying temple architecture requires bringing together fragments of evidence from field measurements, relating these to mathematical and geometric descriptions in canonical texts and proposing "best-fit" constructive models. While scholars in the field have traditionally used manual methods, the innovative application of niche computational techniques can help extend the study of artefact geometry. This paper demonstrates the application of a hybrid computational approach to the problem of recovering the surface geometry of early temple superstructures. The approach combines field measurements of temples, close-range architectural photogrammetry, rule-based generation and parametric modelling. The computing of surface geometry comprises a rule-based global model governing the overall form of the superstructure, several local models for individual motifs using photogrammetry and an intermediate geometry model that combines the two. To explain the technique and the different models, the paper examines an illustrative example of surface geometry reconstruction based on studies undertaken on a tenth century stone superstructure from western India. The example demonstrates that a combination of computational methods yields sophisticated models of the constructive geometry underlying temple form and that these digital artefacts can form the basis for in depth comparative analysis of temples, arising out of similar techniques, spread over geography, culture and time.

University planning and design under confucianism, colonialism, communism and capitalism : the Vietnamese experience

The university in Vietnam represents a thread of continuity that has managed to survive the political, economic and social turmoil faced so frequently by the Vietnamese people. This paper traces the evolution of the Vietnamese university in terms of its site planning and building design from the Hanoi Van Mieu, a Confucian 'temple of literature' which, built in 1070AD, is regarded as the country's first university, to today’s system of general and specialised universities and polytechnic institutions. In the late 1990s another step in the process of evolution began with the rationalization and amalgamation of the tertiary system to form two large, multi-campus and multi-disciplinary universities – the Hanoi National University and the Ho Chi Minh National University.