Dr. Wilder Penfield and Dr. William Cone

                                    Dr. Wilder Penfield and Dr. William Cone, residents

                                  in background; photograph by Yousuf Karsh, 1952; private collection

The co-founders of The Neuro are Dr. Wilder Penfield and Dr. William Cone. Of course, we've all heard of Wilder Penfield, he's famous! There is a street named after him in Montreal and years ago we received in the mail a short book by Penfield on the subject of the family; it was Man and his Family (1967), based on Penfield's Josiah Wood Lectures; Josiah Wood was my step-father's grandfather. I have only recently heard of Dr. William Cone, this was in a newspaper article (by Allison Hanes; published in the Montreal Gazette on 28 February 2026).  If you were to visit The Neuro today, you would probably not see any evidence for the existence of Dr. William Cone and yet Cone was the co-founder of The Neuro. About Filer’s mural, Allison Hanes writes,

The work shows Penfield and Cone back to back at the bedside of a young woman, surrounded by a group of nurses, colleagues, contemporaries and some of the greats from the history of neurology. While Penfield, arms extended, looks toward the horizon, Cone’s sorrowful gaze is fixed on the patient — a perfect synopsis of their medical styles.

I plan to read The Mind Mappers: Friendship, Betrayal and the Obsessive Quest to Chart the Brain, by Eric Andrew-Gee (Random House Canada, 2025); published only last year, this sounds like an excellent book and will explain and describe something of the relationship of Wilder Penfield and William Cone; Cone deserves our attention, he dedicated his life to neurology and is also an eminent and distinguished physician. The William Cone Fonds are archived at the Osler Library at McGill University.

I can understand how Dr. William Cone felt betrayed by Penfield when he was passed over as head of The Neuro when Penfield retired; that is, Cone co-founded The Neuro and he was passed over by Penfield, the other co-founder of The Neuro and Cone's long-time friend. It was perhaps a correct decision but Cone’s feeling of betrayal were overwhelming; this betrayal, it is suggested, led to Cone`s suicide in his office at The Neuro. 

Perhaps the images of mental illness, the suffering endured by people as depicted in Filer`s mural, describe Cone's mental and emotional state at that time in his life. Dr. Cone’s suffering has more to do with psychology than with neurology; in Jungian terms, Cone was confronted by his shadow, by the unresolved dark side, the repressed side, of his psyche; he couldn’t deal with the personal injustice of betrayal by a longtime friend and colleague. At first I thought that Wilder Penfield didn't think Cone was up to the job of running an institution that Cone co-founded, but now I wonder if it was another case of someone not aware of their own shadow, this time Dr. Penfield's shadow. Whatever the reason, in a way it led to Dr. Cone's death.

Dr.Penfield was succeeded at The Neuro by Dr. Theodore Rasmussen. One day I will explain something of our family’s experience at The Neuro.

Dr. William Cone


Cone's obituary

This portrait of Wilder Penfield, painted by Lynn Buckham in 1972, is
on permanent exhibit on the first floor of The Neuro; behind Penfield
is the statue at the The Neuro's entrance

                                     

                                             Wilder Penfield's name inscribed on the wall at the 

                                                            entrance to The Neuro with the names of other 

                                                            important neurologists; Cone's name is absent

                                                                                                                                        

Dr. Penfield’s Josiah Wood lectures 

                                         

                                                       

Note: The statue at The Neuro's entrance is "a marble sculpture titled La Nature se dévoilant devant la Science ("Nature unveiling herself before science"). Installed in 1934, it is a copy of the original sculpture from 1899 by Ernest Barrias, chosen by founder Dr. Wilder Penfield to symbolize the ideal of neurological research."