[Freud and neurology].

Abstract

The author describes sequentially the neurological work of Sigmund Freud, emphasizing this little known phase of "the researcher of laboratory and microscope". It seems that Freud's writings on psychoanalysis left behind other very important scientific research, such as descriptions about protoplasmic movements of carb's neurons, giving the bases for Waldeyer's neural theory. He described cocaine's influence of the psyche, its possible use in the treatment of melancholy and as a substitute for morphine. Freud studies polyneuritis, the brain effects of scurvy and syringomyelia. His description of aphasias follow Hughlings Jackson. He became interested in the study of cerebral palsy in children and assumed that the convulsive crises were manifestations and not its etiology; he classified them, emphasizing that Friedreich's syndrome has to do with heredity and asphyxia of the newborn is acquired. In 1895 he wrote his classic: "A project for a scientific psychology for neurologists" where he writes about the cathexis concept, related to local neuronal charges and graded excitability of the CNS, upon which modern neurophysiology concentrates great attention. After this time, he went on to work on psychopatology.