author
Abraham Myerson
1881–1948
A pioneering neurologist and psychiatrist, he explored how biology, heredity, and environment shape mental illness at a time when those debates were especially charged. His work also gave medicine the clinical observation still known as Myerson’s sign.
2 Audiobooks
The Nervous Housewife
by Abraham Myerson
The Foundations of Personality
by Abraham Myerson
About the author
Born in Jonava, Lithuania, in 1881, he immigrated to the United States as a child and grew up in Boston. He trained in medicine at Tufts Medical School and went on to build a career as a neurologist, psychiatrist, clinician, pathologist, and researcher.
Much of his work focused on the heredity of psychiatric and neurological disorders. He wrote and taught widely, and he became known for careful clinical observation as well as for taking part in major debates about mental illness, behavior, and eugenics in the early 20th century.
He died in Boston in 1948. Today he is remembered both for his broad contribution to neurology and psychiatry and for the exam finding called Myerson’s sign, which keeps his name familiar to later generations of physicians.