Figures and Institutions of the neurological sciences in Paris from 1800 to 1950. Part IV: Psychiatry and psychology

Victor Parant (1848-1924) and the first report of psychosis in the course of Parkinson's disease with dementia

Until the beginning of the twentieth century, neurologists considered that mental disorders in the course of Parkinson's disease (PD) occurred in the terminal phases of the disease or were due to coincidental pathologies. Benjamin Ball (1834-1893), in 1881 and 1882, drew attention to the frequency of cognitive and depressive disorders in PD. In 1883, Victor Parant (1848-1924), referring to Ball's work, published the first detailed observation of a PD patient with dementia and psychotic symptoms. Parant was an alienist running a private clinic for mental diseases in Toulouse, France. One of his main interests was the question of the responsibility of the insane, and he was called upon as a forensic expert in several cases. In this context, Parant examined a man who had been suffering from PD for several years, and later developed concurrently severe cognitive impairment and psychotic disorders. The patient would meet modern criteria for PD-associated psychosis: he had multimodal hallucinations (visual, auditory and somatic), visual illusions, and paranoid delusions. He also reported unusual symptoms: supernumerary limbs and Alice in Wonderland syndrome. Parant forwarded the far-sighted hypothesis that cognitive and psychotic disorders were due to the extension of PD lesions within the brain. The unheralded work of Victor Parant should be recognized in the history of neuropsychiatry.

Anglo-French neurological interactions in the 19th and early 20th centuries: Physicians, places and events

The development of neurology as an independent discipline in the mid-19th century was considerably influenced by the almost simultaneous foundation of the Charcot School at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris and the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic and it's School at Queen Square in London in the 1860's. We have reviewed the early interactions between Charcot's school and the leading neurologists at the National Hospital and also discussed their neurological antecedents and subsequent links up to the outbreak of World War 1 in 1914. Earlier interactions involved Trousseau and Duchenne in France and Graves, Todd, Laycock and Allbutt in Britain. The French Brown-Séquard was one of the first two physicians appointed to the National Hospital. Charcot was a frequent visitor to Britain culminating in his influential role in the 1881 International Medical Congress in London. He first suggested the terms "Parkinson's Disease" and "Jacksonian Epilepsy". He attracted numerous British visitors to Paris and his studies of hysteria were influenced by Laycock, Todd and Russell Reynolds. Hughlings Jackson drew upon the anatomical studies of Gratiolet in his interactions with Broca and Charcot which influenced French views on aphasia, epilepsy and cortical localisation. Ball, an Englishman, was the first Professor of mental and brain diseases in Paris in 1877. Bruce in Edinburgh and Kinnier Wilson in London both maintained frequent contacts with Paris, where the latter first presented his studies of hepatolenticular degeneration in 1912. The Entente Cordiale of 1904 led to further interactions with the leading role of the French and British physicians Raymond and Duckworth. Two outstanding British women, Elizabeth Garrett and Blanche Edwards, qualified in Medicine in Paris with neurological interests. Our review emphasises the constructive influence of the French and British Schools on each other and thus on the development of neurology. The French influence was primarily the establishment of the anatomo-clinical method and the use of photographic illustrations in publications. The British School influence was its Clinical Assessment Skills and scientific studies of newly recognised diseases and concepts and its early development of neurosurgery.

The Madrid School of Neurology (1885-1939)

The emergence of neurology in Madrid between 1885 and 1939 had well-defined characteristics. On foundations laid by Cajal and Río-Hortega, pioneers combined clinical practice with cutting-edge neurohistology and neuropathology research. Luis Simarro, trained in Paris, taught many talented students including Gayarre, Achúcarro and Lafora. The untimely death of Nicolás Achúcarro curtailed his promising career, but he still completed the clinicopathological study of the first American case of Alzheimer's disease. On returning to Spain, he studied glial cells, including rod cells. Rodríguez Lafora described progressive myoclonus epilepsy and completed experimental studies of corpus callosum lesions and clinical and neuropathology studies of senile dementia. He fled to Mexico at the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Sanchís Banús, a sterling clinical neurologist, described the first cluster of Huntington's disease in Spain, and he and Río-Hortega joined efforts to determine that pallidal degeneration underlies rigidity in advanced stages of the disease. Just after the war, Alberca Llorente eruditely described inflammatory diseases of the neuraxis. Manuel Peraita studied "the neurology of hunger" with data collected during the siege of Madrid. Dionisio Nieto, like many exiled intellectuals, settled in Mexico DF, where he taught neurohistological methods and neuropsychiatry in the tradition of the Madrid School of Neurology.

French school of neurology in the 19 th and first half of the 20th century, and its influence in Brazil

French medicine was of the utmost importance for the birth of modern medicine and neurology in the 19 th century. Innovative approaches, such as examination at the bedside, the use of the stethoscope, techniques of auscultation, palpation, and close patient examination, besides emphasis on anatomical-clinical correlation and observation of the outcome of the disease, were put into practice. French medicine offered professional training and incentives for the beginnings of Brazilian neurology and psychiatry. Returning from France, many Brazilian physicians implemented what they had learned, mainly in Paris. The most important pupils of the French neurology schools in Brazil during the 19 th century and first half of the 20 th century include names like Antonio Austregesilo, Aloysio de Castro, Enjolras Vampré, and Deolindo Couto, founders of the leading Brazilian neurological schools, directly influenced by Dejerine, Pierre Marie, Guillain and Babinski.