A case of neglect.

In 1875 William Andrew Johnson, who had been formerly enslaved by Andrew Johnson and who subsequently served as his valet after being emancipated, was present when the former president suffered his fatal stroke. William's description of his deficits, as told decades later to journalist Ernie Pyle, appears to represent one of the earliest known cases of asomatognosia. The limited description of the symptoms provides a backdrop for a discussion of the evolution of knowledge regarding disorders of body awareness. This case also highlights the importance of caregivers as sources of clinical information and serves as a cautionary tale regarding the risk of marginalizing them due to cultural bias.

Silas Weir Mitchell on the Cerebellum: Rich Neurophysiological Concepts and a Modern Perspective.

Silas Weir Mitchell (1829 - 1914), the Philadelphia-based neurologist, is considered a founding father of American neurology. Mitchell's 1869 paper on the physiology of the cerebellum is rich in both content and physiological concepts. Although several of the specific models proposed by Mitchell are no longer considered valid, a number of concepts, or collateral aspects of these concepts, are still considered of value today. No longer valid concepts are (1) that the cerebellum works in concert with the "spinal ganglia" to coordinate motion, and (2) that the cerebellum has a higher-order inhibitory effect on the "spinal ganglia." The valid concepts are (1) that the cerebellum is part of an integrated system of brain regions that produce and modulate movement, (2) that compensatory neural plasticity and cerebellar reserve allow the cerebellum to compensate in the setting of tissue damage, (3) that higher brain systems exert an inhibitory effect on lower brain systems, and (4) that there is a physiological gap between higher and lower life forms. This paper reviews these concepts.

Giacomo Balla: A Painter in the Context of Neuroscience.

Giacomo Balla, a famous Italian Futurist painter, was a great observer of both human motion and emotion. He showed a profound interest toward neurophysiological and neurological sciences. During his search of his personal artistic style, he attended the lessons of Cesare Lombroso, a criminal anthropologist, who at the time was also professor of neurology at the University of Turin. Some years later, he became a close friend of Doctor Francesco Ghilarducci, who had spent a few years in Paris at Jean-Martin Charcot's "School." Balla spent most of his career studying the dynamics of movement and speed. Some of his most famous paintings were inspired by photographic studies on the locomotor system, such as those of the French physiologist Étienne-Jules Marey. His personal painting style reveals his deep interest in neurosciences. We hereby illustrate the role of some of Giacomo Balla's paintings as historical records of the neuroscience environment at the turn of the 20th century.

Acute-on-chronic subdural hematoma: the death of the famous XIX century soprano Maria Malibran-a study of the sources.

Maria Malibran (1808-1836) is one of the most famous sopranos of the nineteenth century. In 1825, along with her father, the renowned tenor Manuel Garcia, she introduced the Italian opera in America for the first time. The European debut in Paris (1828) definitively crowned her as a star. Thus, she was requested by the most famous European theaters. In July 1836, during an equestrian excursion in London, she fell from her horse dashing her head against the ground, resulting in a state of insensibility. Since that accident, she had suffered from continual headache and nervous attacks, but she continued to work. In September 1836, she attended a music festival in Manchester, but her health rapidly worsened: episodes of nervous attacks, headache, and fainting occurred with higher frequency. At the end of a representation, she was attacked by violent convulsions. In the following days, she was laid in a kind of stupor. Afterward, she died at the age of 28. The hypothesis that prolonged efforts during her performance could have provoked a rebleeding of a pre-existent chronic subdural hematoma should be taken into account as a possible cause of death.

Whose name is it anyway? Varying patterns of possessive usage in eponymous neurodegenerative diseases.

There has been long-standing debate over whether use of the possessive form of the names of eponymous neurological disorders should be abandoned. Which view has actually predominated in practice? We empirically assessed current and historical usage in the scientific literature. The PubMed database was queried for the percentage of titles published each year from 1960-2012 which contained the possessive form of Parkinson's (PD), Alzheimer's (AD), Huntington's (HD), Wilson's (WD), and Gaucher's (GD) diseases (e.g. Huntington's disease or chorea vs Huntington disease or chorea). Down syndrome (DS), well known for its changes in terminology, was used as a reference. The possessive form was nearly universal in all conditions from 1960 until the early 1970s. In both DS and GD it then declined at an approximately constant rate of 2 percentage points per year to drop below 15%. The possessive forms of both PD and AD began to decline at the same time but stabilised and have since remained above 80%, with a similar but more volatile pattern in HD. WD, meanwhile, is intermediate between the DS/GD and PD/AD/HD patterns, with a slower decline to its current value of approximately 60%. Declining possessive form usage in GD and DS papers has been remarkably uniform over time and has nearly reached completion. PD and AD appear stable in remaining predominantly possessive. The larger volume of papers published in those fields and their possibly greater public recognition and involvement may make that unlikely to change in the short-term. In a secondary analysis restricted to PD, we found that practices have switched dramatically several times in each of three US-published general neurology journals. Meanwhile, in two UK-published journals, and in the specialist title "Movement Disorders", the possessive form has been maintained consistently. The use of eponyms in neurology shows systematic variation across time, disorders, and journals.