{"title":"<i>Herbis, non verbis, fiunt medicamenta vitae</i>: The Italian botanist Arturo Nannizzi (1887-1961) and his contribution to the treatment of parkinsonism following encephalitis lethargica.","authors":"Mariano Martini, Francesco Brigo, Davide Orsini","doi":"10.1080/0964704X.2023.2279331","DOIUrl":"10.1080/0964704X.2023.2279331","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>We describe the Italian contribution to the description and treatment of parkinsonism following encephalitis lethargica (EL): postencephalitic parkinsonism (PEP). Special attention is devoted to the description of postencephalitic symptoms by Giuseppe Panegrossi (1871-1953) and to the treatment based on <i>Atropa belladonna</i> introduced in Italy and extensively supported by Arturo Nannizzi (1887-1961), who was charged by the queen of Italy with conducting research into this plant and advocating its cultivation for healing purposes. This article gives us the unique opportunity to revisit the figure of this distinguished botanist, providing a summary of his biography, interests, and achievements.</p>","PeriodicalId":49997,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of the Neurosciences","volume":" ","pages":"158-168"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138500019","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Edward Trautner (1890-1978), a pioneer of psychopharmacology.","authors":"Wes Wallace, Greg de Moore","doi":"10.1080/0964704X.2023.2226710","DOIUrl":"10.1080/0964704X.2023.2226710","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article examines the scientific career of Edward Trautner, who did pioneering research in the 1950s on lithium treatment for psychiatric disorders. Trautner was the first scientist to study the mechanism of action of lithium as a psychiatric medication. His research established that lithium could be used safely and rationally, and anticipated by a decade the large volume of research in the 1960s and 1970s that led to international acceptance of lithium treatment for mood disorders. Trautner was a pioneer of biological psychiatry who considered pharmacology to be a useful therapeutical tool rather than a permanent cure for putative chemical imbalances. His research involved cross-disciplinary collaborations that combined clinical and laboratory research in the disciplines of psychiatry, physiology, biochemistry, teratology, and even oncology. Trautner himself had a multidisciplinary background that included publications in literature and philosophy.</p>","PeriodicalId":49997,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of the Neurosciences","volume":" ","pages":"1-56"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49684299","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"NeurHistAlert 27.","authors":"Frank W Stahnisch, Paul Foley","doi":"10.1080/0964704X.2023.2261352","DOIUrl":"10.1080/0964704X.2023.2261352","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":49997,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of the Neurosciences","volume":" ","pages":"95-110"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71415050","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Neuroanniversary 2024.","authors":"Paul Eling","doi":"10.1080/0964704X.2023.2184993","DOIUrl":"10.1080/0964704X.2023.2184993","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":49997,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of the Neurosciences","volume":" ","pages":"89-94"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9543205","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Early Australian neuroscientists and the tyranny of distance.","authors":"Laurie Geffen, Nick J Spencer","doi":"10.1080/0964704X.2023.2232824","DOIUrl":"10.1080/0964704X.2023.2232824","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Australian neuroscientists at the turn of the twentieth century and in the succeeding decades faced formidable obstacles to communication and supply due to their geographical isolation from centers of learning in Europe and North America. Consequently, they had to spend significant periods of their lives overseas for training and experience. The careers of six pioneers-Laura Forster, James Wilson, Grafton Elliot Smith, Alfred Campbell, Raymond Dart, and John Eccles-are presented in the form of vignettes that address their lives and most enduring scientific contributions. All six were medically trained and, although they never collaborated directly with one another, they were linked by their neuroanatomical interests and by shared mentors, who included Nobelists Ramon y Cajal and Charles Sherrington. By the 1960s, as the so-called \"tyranny of distance\" was overcome by advances in communication and transport technology, local collaborative groups of neuroscientists emerged in several Australian university departments that built on the individual achievements of these pioneers. This in turn led to the establishment of the Australasian Neuroscience Society in 1981.</p>","PeriodicalId":49997,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of the Neurosciences","volume":" ","pages":"57-72"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10227153","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The historical and philosophical roots of emergentism in the neurosciences.","authors":"Alan Baumeister","doi":"10.1080/0964704X.2023.2248193","DOIUrl":"10.1080/0964704X.2023.2248193","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Understanding and characterizing the relationship between mental phenomena and the brain is a huge challenge for modern neuroscience. No doubt, the conservative orthodox view of this relationship can be described as physicalist. Physicalism is the idea that, no matter how enigmatic mental phenomena may seem, they are nevertheless completely describable in physical and material terms. Still, despite centuries of effort, aspects of mind, such as the qualitative nature of subjective experience, have defied physical characterization. In the early 1920s, emergentism was advanced to explain the relationship between physical reality and higher-order phenomena, including life and mind. According to emergentism, such higher-order phenomena are derivative of and, at the same time, autonomous to underlying physical reality. This article describes the historical and philosophical development of emergentist theses, particularly as they have been treated in the neurosciences.</p>","PeriodicalId":49997,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of the Neurosciences","volume":" ","pages":"73-88"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10184992","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Carl Bergmann (1814–1865) and the discovery of the anatomical site in the retina where vision is initiated","authors":"Larry Thibos, Katharina Lenner, Cameron Thibos","doi":"10.1080/0964704x.2023.2286991","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0964704x.2023.2286991","url":null,"abstract":"A preeminent quest of nineteenth-century visual neuroscience was to identify the anatomical elements of the retina that respond to light. A major breakthrough came in 1854, when Carl Bergmann disco...","PeriodicalId":49997,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of the Neurosciences","volume":"73 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138744169","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Haloperidol’s introduction in the United States: A tale of a failed trial and its consequences","authors":"João Tavares","doi":"10.1080/0964704x.2023.2283463","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0964704x.2023.2283463","url":null,"abstract":"Haloperidol, the first butyrophenone neuroleptic, was created in Europe by Janssen Pharmaceuticals in 1958 and was introduced swiftly throughout the continent with great enthusiasm. On September 15...","PeriodicalId":49997,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of the Neurosciences","volume":"90 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138680080","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Santiago Giménez-Roldán, Valerie S Palmer, Peter S Spencer
{"title":"Lathyrism in Spain: Lessons from 68 publications following the 1936-39 Civil War.","authors":"Santiago Giménez-Roldán, Valerie S Palmer, Peter S Spencer","doi":"10.1080/0964704X.2023.2195442","DOIUrl":"10.1080/0964704X.2023.2195442","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>After the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), an estimated 1,000 patients presented with lathyrism due to their excessive and prolonged consumption of grasspea (<i>Lathyrus sativus</i> L.) against the backdrop of poverty, drought, and famine. Based on 68 scientific communications between 1941 and 1962 by qualified medical professionals, the disease emerged in different geographical locations involving selective populations: (1) farmers from extensive areas of central Spain, traditionally producers and consumers of grasspea; (2) immigrants in the industrial belt of Catalonia and in the Basque Country, areas with little or no production of grasspea, which was imported from producing areas; (3) workers in Galicia, an area where the legume is neither produced nor consumed, who were seasonally displaced to high-production areas of grasspea in Castille; and (4) inmates of overcrowded postwar Spanish prisons. Original reports included failed attempts by Carlos Jiménez Díaz (1898-1967) to induce experimental lathyrism, the neuropathology of lathyrism in early stages of the disease in two patients, as reported by Carlos Oliveras de la Riva (1914-2007), and the special susceptibility of children to develop a severe form of lathyrism after relatively brief periods of consumption of the neurotoxic seed of <i>L. sativus</i>. In the Spanish Basque Country, <i>L. cicera</i> L. (<i>aizkol</i>) was cultivated exclusively as animal fodder. Patients who were forced to feed on this plant developed unusual manifestations of lathyrism, such as axial myoclonus and severe neuropsychiatric disorders, unknown in other regions of the country and previously unreported. The postwar epidemic of lathyrism in Spain represents the most extensively studied outbreak of this self-limiting but crippling upper motor neuron disease.</p>","PeriodicalId":49997,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of the Neurosciences","volume":" ","pages":"423-455"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9575013","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Neil E Anderson, Hamish S Alexander, Albee Messing
{"title":"Alexander disease: The story behind an eponym.","authors":"Neil E Anderson, Hamish S Alexander, Albee Messing","doi":"10.1080/0964704X.2023.2190354","DOIUrl":"10.1080/0964704X.2023.2190354","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In 1949, William Stewart Alexander (1919-2013), a young pathologist from New Zealand working in London, reported the neuropathological findings in a 15-month-old boy who had developed normally until the age of seven months, but thereafter had progressive enlargement of his head and severe developmental delay. The most striking neuropathological abnormality was the presence of numerous Rosenthal fibers in the brain. The distribution of these fibers suggested to Alexander that the primary pathological change involved astrocytes. In the next 15 years, five similar patients were reported, and in 1964 Friede recognized these cases reflected a single disease process and coined the eponym \"Alexander's disease\" to describe the disorder. In the 1960s, electron microscopy confirmed that Rosenthal fibers were localized to astrocytes. In 2001, it was shown that Alexander disease is caused by mutations in the gene encoding glial fibrillary acidic protein, the major intermediate filament protein in astrocytes. Although the clinical, imaging, and pathological manifestations of Alexander disease are now well known, few people are familiar with Alexander's career. Although he did not make a further contribution to the literature on Alexander disease, his observations and accurate interpretation of the neuropathology have justified the continued use of the eponym \"Alexander disease.\"</p>","PeriodicalId":49997,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of the Neurosciences","volume":" ","pages":"399-422"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9224702","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}