Shakespeare never stepped inside a university, yet his plays read like a Renaissance neurology textbook. The bumbling Falstaff in Henry IV Part 2 describes what sounds remarkably like a stroke—a brain injury that also causes paralysis. Julius Caesar suffers epilepsy, a condition that can result from brain injuries, while King Lear’s descent into dementia with Lewy bodies remains heartbreakingly accurate. The Bard also depicted Parkinsonism, sleep disorders, headaches, and even prion disease with stunning precision. The NIH has examined Shakespeare’s neurological accuracy through peer-reviewed studies, with major analyses published in 2010 and 2013 documenting these portrayals from an era when brain injuries were poorly understood. Here’s the jaw-dropper: Jean-Martin Charcot, the father of modern neurology, “frequently used Shakespearean references in his neurological teaching sessions, stressing how acute objective insight is essential to achieving expert clinical diagnosis”. Living when people thought demons caused seizures, Shakespeare captured the devastating reality of neurological conditions with clinical precision that earned recognition from neurology’s greatest minds. His genius wasn’t just wordplay—it was observation that would make modern neurologists jealous.