European neurology
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Biography Historical Article
Crime, hysteria and belle époque hypnotism: the path traced by Jean-Martin Charcot and Georges Gilles de la Tourette.
Hysteria and hypnotism became a favorite topic of studies in the fin de siècle neurology that emerged from the school organized at La Salpêtrière by Jean-Martin Charcot, where he had arrived in 1861. Georges Gilles de la Tourette started working with Charcot in 1884 and probably remained his most faithful student, even after his mentor's death in 1893. This collaboration was particularly intense on 'criminal hypnotism', an issue on which Hippolyte Bernheim and his colleagues from the Nancy School challenged the positions taken by the Salpêtrière School. ⋯ It was subsequently shown that hypnotism had nothing to do with it. The delusional woman was interned at Sainte-Anne for mental disturbance, thus escaping trial. Ironically, Gilles de la Tourette may have been partly responsible, since he had been one of the strongest proponents of placing mentally-ill criminals in asylums instead of prisons.
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We report 5 of 75 (6.6%) patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) submitted to subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation (STN-DBS) who developed transient disabling dyskinesias immediately after surgery. Dyskinesias persisted despite levodopa withdrawal, cessation or reduction of stimulation, and resolved spontaneously in a maximum period of 12 weeks without the need to change stimulation active contact. ⋯ A microlesion in the STN, probably concealed in cerebral MRI by the electrode-related artifact, could have been involved in the etiopathology of our patients' symptoms. The presence of transient disabling dyskinesia in PD patients immediately after STN-DBS might be a predictor of good outcome as measured by a decrease in the LEDD needed.
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After Gall, Bouillaud and Auburtin had localized the function of language to the frontal lobes in the early 19th century, Paul Broca's famous patient, M. Leborgne (known as 'Tan'), was described to the Anthropological Society of Paris and his case was published in the Bulletin de la Société Anatomique, in 1861. Broca relied on the uncut brain for his clinicopathological inferences. ⋯ The subsequent controversies with Dax and Pierre Marie are summarized. More recent imaging of the brains of Lelong and Leborgne has partly vindicated Broca's controversial conclusions. Most papers on Broca's work contain only brief, derivative references to his 1861 paper; the actual contents, translated into English, are reproduced here.
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Biography Historical Article
Sir Samuel Wilks (1824-1911): 'the most philosophical of english physicians'.
This paper retells some of the achievements and personal attributes of Sir Samuel Wilks, one of the great Guy's Hospital physicians and neurologists of the second half of the 19th century. He was a fellow of the Royal Society, president of the Royal College of Physicians, and physician extraordinary to Queen Victoria. A prolific author and original observer of clinical and pathological diseases, he was renowned for his Lectures on Pathological Anatomy, and his original descriptions of syphilis, epilepsy, inflammatory bowel diseases, and myasthenia gravis.
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Spontaneous intracranial hypotension (SIH) is an uncommon, but not rare, cause of headache. We analyzed a series of patients with SIH and attempted to establish a clinical procedure. ⋯ A blind epidural blood patch from the lumbar area is an acceptable procedure even if the area of leakage is unknown. A reasonable clinical procedure for the patients of SIH may minimize the rate of repeat puncture.