Journal of the History of the Neurosciences最新文献

Most historical articles have named Johann Jacob Wepfer as the first author to describe a case of chronic subdural hematoma (CSDH). However, the question arises whether these cases truly describe CSDH. Two other names that appear in literature as the first authors to describe a case of CSDH are Thomas Willis and Giovanni Battista Morgagni. In our attempt to find the first description of a CSDH, we studied the original cases described by Willis, Wepfer, and Morgagni. The cases described by Willis and Wepfer cannot be interpreted as cases of CSDH. Willis's university scholar is more likely to have experienced venous infarction with an underlying septic thrombosis than a CSDH. Wepfer's cases seem to represent an intraparenchymal hemorrhage from the rupture of a branch or branches of the internal carotid artery, a subarachnoid hemorrhage complicated with hydrocephalus, and a hydrocephalus in tuberculous meningitis. Morgagni's case described in Letter III, Article 20 in the Sedibus in 1761 seems to be the first accurate historical description of a CSDH, and we believe it should be cited as such. With these early cases of alleged CSDH, we emphasize the importance of misquotation and blind copying of references, which are important citation errors.

The origins of Edward Flatau's "The Law of Eccentric Location of Long Pathways in Spinal Cord" are discussed, considering newly examined archival documents from Central State Archive of Moscow and Museum of the I. M. Sechenov University (former medical faculty of Imperial Moscow University [IMU]). These documents, together with German and Polish records, illustrate the international character of Flatau's education and shed light on the bigger question of interactions between Moscow and Berlin fin de siècle neurologists. Flatau's peregrinations between these two cities are documented, together with difficulties encountered due to his nationality and the changing political environment.

In most parts of the developed world today, the neurological diagnosis of poliomyelitis is discussed only as a historical curiosity. For decades an epidemic cause for lameness and paralysis in infected children, reported cases of polio plummeted following the introduction of effective vaccines against the causative virus in the 1950s and 1960s. Much has been written of the trials and successes of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, but little is generally known about how the disease was originally named. In an authoritative reference work on the History of Poliomyelitis (1971), John R. Paul attributed in passing the coining of the term "poliomyelitis" to the celebrated German clinician Adolf Kussmaul (1822-1902). Kussmaul is widely known to physicians today for several unrelated contributions, but none of his authorized biographers have mentioned his naming the disease. In this historical review article, we set out to verify the claim that Kussmaul coined the term "poliomyelitis," surveying in the process his broader contributions to neurology and medicine.

The collective efforts of Australasian neuroscientists over the past 50 years to forge a binational presence are reviewed in this article. The events in the 1970s leading to the formation of an informal Australian Neurosciences Society are discussed in the context of the international emergence of neuroscience as an interdisciplinary science. Thereafter, the establishment in 1980 of the Australian Neuroscience Society, subsequently renamed as the Australasian Neuroscience Society (ANS), is described. The achievements of ANS-including its active role in developing national, regional, and global cooperation to promote neuroscience-are chronicled over successive decades, followed by a discussion of the future challenges facing the society and its associated neuroscience institutions.

Ernst Brücke was one of the most influential figures in Sigmund Freud's life and work. Freud studied under him for around six years during his student years, and he never turned his back on Brücke's fundamental teachings. Brücke was a member of the strictly materialist and reductionist movement called the School of Helmholtz. This article will interpret how this physiological movement influenced Freud's psychoanalysis and how its understanding of science was embedded in Freud's theory. For this purpose, I will focus on the relationship between Brücke and Freud, and then will demonstrate how Brücke's influence appears in Freud's psychoanalytical theory. Despite the common practice of evaluating Project for a Scientific Psychology as the last attempt of Freud's physiological commitment, I will take Freud's ontology and epistemology as a product of his interaction with Ernst Brücke. In this conjunction, I will discuss psychoanalysis's essential physiological and neurological components, such as the conservation of energy, the principle of constancy, the pleasure principle, and dual-aspect monism. For this purpose, I will apply the methodology of Randall Collins, the so-called sociology of philosophy. This method allows us to analyze personal contacts between master and pupil and the results of this interaction. This method will help to demonstrate why Brücke's influence was more prevalent in Freud's psychoanalysis than any other neuroscientific master of Freud.

Medical interest in the knee-jerk reflex began in about 1875 with simultaneous and independent publications by Wilhelm Heinrich Erb (1840-1921) and Carl Friedrich Otto Westphal (1833-1890) contending that the knee jerk was absent (and the ankle clonus was present) in all clear cases of locomotor ataxia (tabes dorsalis). Physicians in the medical communities of Europe, Great Britain, and North America responded with case and large group studies that tested this contention. These studies revealed the usefulness of the knee jerk and other myotatic reflexes, but also unexpected characteristics. The knee jerk, apparently so simple, proved to be a complex phenomenon depending the strength of the strike on the patella, induced muscle tension, and inhibition from the brain. Was it a reflex with afferent and efferent nerves and an intervening process in the spinal cord, or was it a local phenomenon confined to the muscle itself? Experimental studies directed at the reflex issue investigated latencies from patella strike to leg extension or muscle contraction and compared them with latencies from direct muscle strikes and theoretical calculations based on reflex components. Such studies were unable to resolve the reflex issue during the nineteenth century. The physicians were shown to be limited, like all scientific explorers of the unknown, by their knowledge, methodology, and technology.

Albert Wojciech Adamkiewicz (1850-1821) was a Polish neurologist and researcher who is best known for his description of the so-called Adamkiewicz-artery. In contrast to his achievements in neurology, his research in psychiatry from his time in Vienna (1891-1921) is commonly overlooked. We examined all titles of his publications from 1891 to 1921 and provided a close reading of those works that were related to his research on the neural basis of mental phenomena and disorders. We demonstrate that, in later stages of his scientific career, Adamkiewicz critically engaged with contemporary positions in psychiatry and the psychogenic explanation of mental disorders. He developed a theory based on his neurological research, correlating central theorems of late-nineteenth-century psychiatry to neural networks in the human cortex. These achievements make him a historical forerunner of neuropsychiatric concepts of mental phenomena and disorders.

Among William Gowers's many contributions to neurology, the concept of abiotrophy ("an essential failure of vitality") has been relatively overlooked. In this article, we review the echoes of Gowers's concept in neurology, ophthalmology, and aging research. We also argue that abiotrophy is broader than both heredodegeneration and neurodegeneration. Unlike the common view that it simply means premature aging, abiotrophy currently can be understood as a progressive degenerative process of a mature specialized tissue, which is nonsynchronous with normal aging and may affect organs or systems early in life, resulting from the age-dependent effects of genetic mutations or variants, even if environmental factors may also causally contribute to the process. Although the term has largely fallen out of use, there are likely to be everlasting echoes of Gowers's concept, through which he is to be considered a source of the modern thinking about the etiology and nosology of neurological diseases.

Edward Henry Sieveking (1816-1904) was a professionally successful and well respected nineteenth-century London physician who, over the span of some half a century, continuously held appointment to British royalty, including Queen Victoria and King Edward VII. In 1858, he published a monograph On Epilepsy and Epileptiform Seizures, with a second edition in 1861. In both editions, he described an entity cephalalgia epileptica that comprised the occurrence of headache in association with phenomena that resembled the premonitory symptom of some epileptic seizures. However, the sufferers did not have epilepsy, in that they did not experience generalized convulsions. Sieveking, like most of his British contemporaries, had little awareness of the existence of the variety of migraine phenomena apart from headache itself. In retrospect, it seems likely that migraine with aura probably was the main basis of the disorder Sieveking designated, one that later may have been termed migralepsy.