The history of the European Neurological Society (1986-2014)-10 years later.

Background And Purpose: The European Academy of Neurology (EAN) was a merger from two parent societies: the European Neurological Association (ENS, founded in 1986) and the European Federation of Neurological Societies (EFNS, founded in 1987).

Methods: This article was written by nine former presidents, three of whom were also founders of the ENS, and is based on recollections and documents. It follows up on a review of the ENS history stored in the EAN archive.

[Are mental and neurological disorders related?].

A recent article in Science reported the results of a genome-wide analysis of a variety of psychiatric and neurological conditions, conducted by an international consortium. Psychiatric disorders showed some degree of genetic risk sharing; conversely, the genetic risk profiles of neurological disorders lacked virtually any resemblance to each other as well as to mental diseases. Even though the spectrum of studied diseases was incomplete, the findings are unsurprising.

Transient monocular blindness and the risk of vascular complications according to subtype: a prospective cohort study.

Patients with transient monocular blindness (TMB) can present with many different symptoms, and diagnosis is usually based on the history alone. In this study, we assessed the risk of vascular complications according to different characteristics of TMB. We prospectively studied 341 consecutive patients with TMB.

A Patient With Word Blindness in the Seventeenth Century.

Johann Jakob Wepfer (1620-1695), city physician in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, published two books on "apoplexy." He proposed new ideas about the events in the brain during such attacks, based on Harvey's theory of the circulation of the blood. Wepfer postulated extravasation of whole blood or serum in the brain, in opposition to the Galenic notion of blocked ventricles.

End-of-life decisions in patients with severe acute brain injury.

Most in-hospital deaths of patients with stroke, traumatic brain injury, or postanoxic encephalopathy after cardiac arrest occur after a decision to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatments. Decisions on treatment restrictions in these patients are generally complex and are based only in part on evidence from published work. Prognostic models to be used in this decision-making process should have a strong discriminative power.

Is the long-term prognosis of transient ischemic attack or minor ischemic stroke affected by the occurrence of nonfocal symptoms?

Background And Purpose: In patients with a transient ischemic attack or ischemic stroke, nonfocal neurological symptoms, such as confusion and nonrotatory dizziness, may be associated with a higher risk of vascular events. We assessed the relationship between nonfocal symptoms and the long-term risk of vascular events or death in patients with a transient ischemic attack or minor ischemic stroke.

Methods: We related initial symptoms with outcome events in 2409 patients with a transient ischemic attack (n=723) or minor ischemic stroke (n=1686), included in the Life Long After Cerebral ischemia cohort.

Antifibrinolytic therapy for aneurysmal subarachnoid haemorrhage.

Background: Rebleeding is an important cause of death and disability in people with aneurysmal subarachnoid haemorrhage. Rebleeding is probably related to dissolution of the blood clot at the site of aneurysm rupture by natural fibrinolytic activity. This review is an update of a previously published Cochrane review.

[Neisser and the clap].

In 1879, during his specialization in dermatology, Albert Ludwig Sigesmund Neisser (1855-1916) discovered the bacterial cause of gonorrhoea. The gonococcus - Neisseria gonorrhoea - would, however, not bear his name until 1933. Neisser's early research focused primarily on venereal diseases, syphilis in particular, and on leprosy.

[Kolff and the artificial kidney].

Willem Kolff (1911-2009), son of a physician, studied medicine in Leiden and specialised in internal medicine in Groningen. It was there that he started attempts to apply the phenomenon of dialysis in patients suffering from renal failure. He built the first prototypes of dialysis machines after his appointment as an internist in the municipal hospital in Kampen, during the Second World War.

[Collaboration in the first-line setting in medically unexplained symptoms: from powerlessness to coordination].

Two women aged 19 and 37 consulted their general practitioners (GPs) for medically unexplained symptoms (MUS). Patient A suffered sudden pain in her legs. She needed crutches, but no somatic explanation could be found.

[Boerhaave and his syndrome].

Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738), professor of botany, medicine and chemistry at the University of Leyden, attracted students from across Europe, thanks to his didactic qualities, reinforced by bedside teaching. His published writings, often unauthorised, were mainly theoretical and systematic. The more remarkable is the extensive and 'atrocious' case history he published about the 51-year-old nobleman Jan Gerrit van Wassenaer.

[Riva-Rocci and blood pressure].

Scipione Riva-Rocci (1863-1937) was educated in Turin as a physician and later as a doctor of internal medicine. In 1896 and 1897 he published a series of four articles (in Italian) on a new method for measuring blood pressure. Previous non-invasive methods were all based on compression of the radial pulse, in keeping with centuries of medical tradition, but they were cumbersome and unreliable.

[Ranke and modern surgery in Groningen].

Hans Rudolph Ranke (1849-1887) studied medicine in Halle, located in the eastern part of Germany, where he also trained as a surgeon under Richard von Volkmann (1830-1889), during which time he became familiar with the new antiseptic technique that had been introduced by Joseph Lister (1827-1912). In 1878 he was appointed head of the department of surgery in Groningen, the Netherlands, where his predecessor had been chronically indisposed and developments were flagging. Within a few months, Ranke had introduced disinfection by using carbolic acid both before and during operations.

[Hoogendoorn and the medical registry].

Dirk Hoogendoorn (1914-1990) was a solo general practitioner in the village of Wijhe (eastern part of the Netherlands) from 1941, during the time of the German occupation, until 1971. From the very beginning, he combined his practice with the recording of disease patterns. He first concentrated on infectious diseases, especially whooping cough, which was the subject of his doctoral thesis.

[Behçet and his triad].

Hulusi Behçet (1889-1948) was an internationally oriented Turkish dermatologist. He was closely involved in establishing the Istanbul Faculty of Medicine, where he later became a professor. In addition, Behçet was a scientist and an editor of the German professional journal, Dermatologische Wochenschrift.

[Papanicolaou and the cervical smear].

George N. Papanicolaou (1883-1962) was born in Kymi (on the island of Euboea, Greece). He studied medicine in Athens but chose not to join his father's practice in Kymi.

[Quincke and his oedema].

Heinrich Irenaeus Quincke (1842-1922), the son of a physician, was born in Frankfurt but was educated in Berlin where he also completed his medical studies in 1864. After a 'grand tour' that took him to Paris, Vienna and London, he was trained in Berlin, first in surgery and later in internal medicine, under Von Frerichs (1819-1885). In 1878, he became a professor of internal medicine in Berne; from 1883 he held the chair of medicine in Kiel, which he would hold for the next 30 years.

Vitamin K antagonists versus antiplatelet therapy after transient ischaemic attack or minor ischaemic stroke of presumed arterial origin.

Background: People who have had a transient ischaemic attack (TIA) or non-disabling ischaemic stroke have an annual risk of major vascular events of between 4% and 11%. Aspirin reduces this risk by 20% at most. Secondary prevention trials after myocardial infarction indicate that treatment with vitamin K antagonists is associated with a risk reduction approximately twice that of treatment with antiplatelet therapy.

[Moleschott and materialism].

Jacques Moleschott (1822-1893), born into a Dutch Roman Catholic family, attended secondary school in Cleve (Germany). There he became captivated by Hegelian philosophy and lost his faith. After medical studies in Heidelberg and a brief spell as physician in Utrecht, where he struck up a life-long friendship with the physiologists Franciscus Donders (1818-1889) and Izaak van Deen (1805-1869), he returned to Heidelberg as lecturer in physiology.

[Kocher and goitre].

Emile Theodor Kocher (1841-1917) studied and spent his entire career as surgeon (since 1866) and professor (since 1872) in his native Berne, apart from a 'grand tour' of surgical institutions in Europe. The discipline of surgery rapidly expanded, not least through the introduction of anaesthesia and antisepsis. Kocher's expertise ranged from ankle fractures to hypophysectomy; he wrote an authoritative textbook on surgical technique.

[Van Helmont and gas].

Johan Baptista van Helmont (1579-1644) was born in Brussels, around the time the Southern Netherlands ceased their resistance against the Spanish rule. He studied a variety of disciplines in Louvain and made a 'grand tour' in Europe, but remained dissatisfied with traditional knowledge, which he regarded as empty phrases and sophistry. His spouse being wealthy, he devoted himself to studying nature anew, unencumbered by prejudice, as Paracelsus (1493-1541) had done before him.

The plantar reflex: additional value of stroking the lateral border of the foot to provoke an upgoing toe sign and the influence of experience.

The aim of this work was to determine the value of stroking the lateral dorsal border of the foot, in addition to stroking the sole in patients with a suspected pyramidal tract lesion. In addition, we studied the differences in interpretation between neurologists, residents, and medical students. We included subjects who had weakness of at least one leg and in whom a pyramidal tract lesion was suspected.