An Interview with James Kwesi Anquandah

Professor James Kwesi Anquandah was Ghana’s first archaeologist. He was also the first Ghanaian to become head of the Archaeology Department at the University of Ghana, which was the first archaeology department in sub-Saharan Africa, established in 1951. Dedicating his life to Ghanaian archaeology, particularly during the difficult years in Ghana in the 1980s and early 1990s, Anquandah had a significant impact on the development of archaeology in Ghana. In addition to his research, advisory and curatorial work, Professor Anquandah was instrumental in the training of three generations of Ghanaian archaeologists. During the course of a professional career that spanned nearly six decades, Professor Anquandah made archaeology relevant and accessible to all Ghanaians.     

The James Ramsay Hunt Case Books

James Ramsay Hunt (1874–1937) was one of the pioneers of early-twentieth-century American neurology. The James Ramsay Hunt Case Books, Columbia University, were created by Hunt and chronicle his experience with private patients from 1903 until 1937. This resource is not widely known to scholars and the content of these 30 volumes has not been described in detail. The purpose of this report is to describe this resource in terms of its organization, general contents and special features. The books contain the clinical records of 5,019 consecutive patients. The largest proportion had neurasthenia or psychiatric diagnoses, followed by those with neuropathies, manifestations of neurosyphilis, migraine and epilepsy. The books, through the enclosed correspondence, photographs, and poetry sent by patients, reveal a close relationship between the patients and their physician. Hunt's drawings are a special feature of the early volumes, including his original unpublished drawing of the lesions associated with his herpetic geniculate ganglion syndrome. The Case Books, by providing an indexed and permanent record of cases, would have made it easier for Hunt to cross-reference patients with similar clinical characteristics when he was in the process of describing a new syndrome. These Case Books provide a valuable perspective of the practice of neurology in early-twentieth-century America.