Frank W. Stahnisch recognized for work in history of neurosciences and medicine

Dr. Frank W. Stahnisch is having an eventful 2025. 

The German-born scholar, who has taught at UCalgary for 17 years, received his Canadian citizenship. His fourth monograph, Great Minds in Despair – the Forced Migration of German-Speaking Neuroscientists to North America, 1939-1989 was published. He started a one-year research program at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire studying the history of the wellness movement. 

And the day before he left for his sabbatical at Dartmouth, Dr. Stahnisch, MD, PhD, FRCPSC (Hon), received the email from the Royal Society of Canada informing him he was being named a fellow. 

“I'm really happy and, of course, humbled to have received such an honour and join a society that comprises some of the best scientists, scholars and artists of all of Canada,” says the professor in the Department of History in the Faculty of Arts and the Department of Community Health Sciences in the Cumming School of Medicine. As an immigrant to Canada, he says being a fellow is especially meaningful, “seeing how much one can achieve in the Canadian Academy and how supportive and accepting the country is.” 

Understanding the origins of the “wellness” movement to improve medicine

Stahnisch’s transnational, interdisciplinary work into the history of medicine has furthered both the scientific and popular understandings of the origins of neuroscience and its relationship with public mental health. At Dartmouth College, he is diving into 19^th century libraries to study the last 150 years of integrative or integrated medicine which combine conventional and alternative therapies.

“So far, it seems to me, these approaches have been largely unsuccessful, although major contributions have been made at certain times,” he says. “I want to explore what they were contributing to medicine on the one hand and on the other hand why they failed, and why did it take so long to find some integrated answers.”

The “life reform movement” of the late 19^th century aimed to address “challenging cultural problems with 19th century urbanization and industrialization,” he says. It encouraged a back-to-nature lifestyle, alternative medicines and so-called healthy foods. “Nutritionists and experimental physiologists hopped on this bandwagon,” says Stahnisch. 

His work aims to find methods within medicine to augment “wellness” influences through specific therapeutic approaches that combine mind and body. “I’m looking at how a more integrated approach could benefit academic medicine as a whole — moving away from an organ-centered form of pathology and trying to better understand what we now would probably call a wellness perspective.”

Growing interest in history of neuroscience 

Over his three decades studying the history of neuroscience — including the last decade as editor-in-chief of the flagship, international publication Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, Stahnisch has seen growing interest in the area. “When I started in the late ’90s, it almost didn’t exist. It has really burgeoned as a field.”

While there were “patches of knowledge,” there was a dearth of work into the general development of the neurosciences. “It was largely lacking. And now you have dozens of books, if not hundreds. Neurosciences are a major area of research in modern biomedicine, perhaps co-ordinated to other fields like human genetics, the computational and now, the AI revolution.”

A German-born, newly-minted Canadian citizen spending a year researching in the U.S. as that country undergoes radical changes, Stahnisch is looking forward to working with the Royal Society to further science and scholarship. 

“I do hope we can recentre a bit and emphasize academic freedom, creativity in scientific institutions and the opportunity to create new ideas and new institutions,” he says. “Currently, unfortunately, I'm a bit pessimistic in terms of where things are moving, but I do hope that overall, some recentring might be possible and perhaps institutions like the Royal Society of Canada will play a good role in that.”