Looking back on wartime service: Reminiscence by James G. Van Straten

In this article we highlight the reminiscence of a distinguished Veteran of the Vietnam War. The narrative describes his wartime service in Vietnam and the legacy of these experiences across his military career and subsequent civilian life. The individual profiled is not intended to represent all Veterans who served in the Vietnam War. In fact, this is a very unique individual; a highly educated, career officer and committed Catholic who served in various roles within the United States Army Medical Department. This narrative represents memories and reflections from his military career and in his subsequent post-military civilian life.     

L'arrêt du sport intensif : révélation d'addictions ?

This study aims to show the impact of ending intensive sport activities on the psychic life of two former high level sportsmen and this under a psychoanalytical point of view. The question is to know whether ending intensive sport activities can be at the origin of an addiction of replacement (knowing meanwhile that the sportsman cannot accept the loss of his high level athlete statute) and whether the depression and the drop in self-esteem at the end of a sportsman's career are inevitable. The ending of a sportsman's career also puts an end to his quasi-pathological identity research, research which could be compared to a borderline behaviour. Moreover, a high level sportsman is more vulnerable at the end of his career and can be much more inclined to become dependent on drugs or on other addictions. During his career two distinct worlds surround him: the sporting family of adoption and the family unit. We can therefore question whether the sportsman dissociates these two families on a psychical level in order not to fall into a depression or into another dependence. Stopping sport activities is thus synonymous with a total loss of oneself; and this can therefore involve an anguish of separation and a probable fall into a social vacuum and into addiction.     

Frédéric Bremer 1892-1982: a pioneer in sleep research

Frédéric Bremer was one of the pioneer neurophysiologists who dedicated their career to understanding the neural mechanisms involved in the control of sleep-wake regulation. This paper follows his career and his major achievements. We found that Bremer's interest in sleep resulted from his unexpected observations after transecting the brain at the midcollicular level in the "encéphale isolé" preparation. The sleep-like behaviour of the animal, accompanied by slow waves in the cortex, convinced him that sleep resulted from cortical deafferentation. He was further convinced that deafferentation was the cause of sleep when he found that transecting the brain at the medullary level did not much affect the sleep-wake cycle. As we show, Bremer's views that sleep is a passive phenomenon imposed on the brain because of deafferentation was shared by most of his contemporaries. Years later Bremer admitted that he interpreted his experimental findings wrongly. He continued to investigate sleep using his preparations and made important contributions to understanding the relationships between the brainstem reticular formation and the basal forebrain hypnogenic centres, as well as the importance of light on these relationships.     

Pediatric neurosurgery and myself

The career of one neurosurgeon interested in pediatric neurosurgery is described, with reference to the people who influenced him and his own publications.     

Lessons in mentoring

Mentoring is an essential catalyst for a successful medical career in science or clinical practice. In recent years, tools have been developed to measure the impact of mentoring on career achievements, and numerous models have been developed to improve mentor training. Sid Gilman, M.D., F.R.C.P., Chair of Neurology for 26 years at the University of Michigan, is well-recognized as a role model for mentors in neurology across the country. We report the result of a survey of his former trainees on the valuable aspects of his mentoring style. A review of the current mentoring literature, including suggested training programs for mentors, is also provided.     

Bedřich Roth: pioneer in sleep medicine

Bedřich Roth was a Czech neurologist who dedicated his professional life to the study of sleep medicine. Shortly after WW2 he initiated a research program with an exclusive focus on narcolepsy and the hypersomnias. At the young age of 38 years, he published his first book. It was in Czech but had extensive English and Russian summaries. In 1967 he spent a study period in Marseille with Professor Henri Gastaut, who was very impressed by this bright and hardworking young neurologist. Dr. Roth, with his colleague Sona Nevšímalová, was the first to publish on the high frequency of depression in patients with narcolepsy and hypersomnia. He was the first person to define Idiopathic Hypersomnia and, along with Allan Rechtschaffen, to document the high frequency of sleep drunkenness in such patients. His many contributions, and his 65th birthday, were celebrated in 1984. Dr. Roth developed Hodgkin's lymphoma and passed away in November 1989. A conference celebrating his life and career took place in Prague in 2009. In 2015 the annual worldwide Idiopathic Hypersomnia Awareness Week organized by Michelle Chadwick celebrated the 35th anniversary of his 1980 book “Narcolepsy and Hypersomnia". Dr. Roth was the first physician to dedicate his entire career to sleep medicine and his publications predated by more than two decades those of all other authors. Bedřich Roth should therefore be considered to be the true father of sleep medicine. He was known widely for his integrity, humility, honesty, and his perseverance to achieve his goals.     

William Watson Cheyne (1852–1932): a life in medicine and his innovative surgical treatment of congenital hydrocephalus

William Watson Cheyne lived and trained during a period of great advances in medical knowledge and surgical techniques. Despite his various contributions to the fields of bacteriology and surgery, little is known about his career or his life apart from his affiliations with Joseph Lister. This article aims to identify Cheyne as a pioneer in the treatment of congenital hydrocephalus and sheds light on the man who existed in Lister’s shadow for most of his life. Cheyne’s technique for surgical intervention of hydrocephalus was a great turning point and contributes to the current treatment strategy utilized today for hydrocephalus.     

The neurological legacy of psychoanalysis: Freud as a neurologist

The discipline of psychoanalysis was significantly influenced by Freud's experience in neuroanatomy and clinical neurology. Sigmund Freud began his medical career as a neuroanatomist and neurologist before he later established the theories and techniques of psychoanalysis. Freud made several significant contributions to research in neuroanatomy and clinical neurology that were overshadowed by his later accomplishments. As the "Father of Psychoanalysis," Freud was, and his legacy always will be, that of a neurologist.     

Maximien Parchappe (1800–1866), héros de l’anatomopathologie de la folie et bâtisseur d’asiles

A student of Jean-Étienne Esquirol, Maximien Parchappe (1800–1866) was an alienist whose career consisted of two successive periods. First as an asylum clinician in Normandy, he tried to find an etiology for “madness” through a macroscopic anatomical-pathological study that included nearly eight hundred brains and drew from the nascent field of statistics. Then, once he had been appointed an “asylum inspector”, he would play an important role in the application of the French Law of 1838. His first goal was the construction of asylums in every French department that met architectural standards specific to the care of the insane. He then worked to promote the humanization of treatment and the well-being of those interned through innovations such as ergotherapy. Extremely dedicated to his work, Parchappe regularly published findings from his various studies throughout his career in a number of works. His main results are summarized here, following a brief biography of this man of conviction, a fine example of a nineteenth-century progressive alienist.     

Musical tradition, insurrection, and resurrection: the life and legacy of composer/bassist Charles Mingus

Charles Mingus was perhaps the foremost straight-ahead jazz upright bassist and composer of his generation, blending the inspirational influences of gospel, jazz improvisation, and art music leanings into a unique style all his own. His demise from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in his fifth decade robbed the world of one of the great creative voices of American music. Aspects of Mingus' life, his career as a bassist, bandleader, and composer, and his neuromuscular illness are discussed, emphasizing his legacy for the disparate fields of jazz and neurology.     

William Halse Rivers Rivers (1864-1922) and the sensory nervous system

The polymath William Rivers played an important role in his work with Henry Head in demonstrating the varied, evolving patterns of sensory loss, and epicritic and protopathic sensation, after the section of the superficial ramus of Head's left radial nerve. After a mixed and frustrated army career Rivers devoted his attentions to shell shock and other psychological disturbances which were well received in his time. Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen were among the distinguished patients whose writings revealed Rivers as the revered object of their gratitude.     

The maturation of affective neuroscience: celebrating the research career of Jaak Panksepp

Jaak Panksepp has been a pioneer in the burgeoning field of affective neuroscience. His visionary research has inspired numerous students, colleagues and health professionals to aspire to understand the neurobiological underpinnings of emotions and their relationship to psychiatric disorders. Bowling Green State University was honored to host a celebration of Jaak and his considerable research accomplishments, and what follows is an abbreviated biography of his career in science.     

Le Zouave Jacob ou la thaumaturgie par le magnétisme

During the Second Empire in France (1828–1913), a soldier called Jacob drew Parisian crowds by performing so-called miraculous cures. The craze that he created allowed to live from his “miracles” all of his life. He performed a kind of group hypno-therapy, which prefigures the methods used by today's evangelists. His career and biography are depicted here, and an attempt at explaining how he was able convince his patients they were cured.     

Friedrich Mauz – T4-Gutachter und Milit?rpsychiater

Friedrich Mauz is one of the medical perpetrators of the second tier whose biography is difficult to comprehend. Autobiographies from three different political systems exist - Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and postwar Germany in which he constantly reinvented himself. While after 1933 he suddenly emphasized his participation in the civil war turmoil during the early period of the Weimar Republic and his patriotism, he then depicted himself after 1945 as an apolitical person characterized by Württemberg pietism who inwardly rejected the Nazi State but had found himself prepared to accept "all sorts of humiliating concessions." He claimed that he had always remained true to his scientific code of conduct and had distanced himself from psychiatric genetics. In point of fact, Mauz was among those exonerated in the denazification trial in 1946 and was able to pursue his career in the Federal Republic of Germany. However, if the sources are read against the grain, a different picture emerges. Mauz's career stalled in the 1930s, not because he had been politically offensive, but because his scientific work was flimsy and considered lacking originality, particularly since he had chosen constitution research and psychotherapy as his main fields of interest, which were overshadowed by research in genetic psychiatry in the 1930s. Mauz tendered his services to the Nazi policy of genetic health, served as a medical assessor in proceedings based on the "Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring," permitted himself to be recruited for the T4 program as a medical expert, even participated in the deliberations on a future "Law on Euthanasia," and as a consulting psychiatrist for the German Armed Forces contributed to military medicine.     

Bartolomeo Panizza's "Observations on the optic nerve" (1855)

Bartolomeo Panizza was the first person to produce experimental and clinical evidence for a visual area in the posterior cerebral cortex. We here provide the first translation of this work entitled "Observations on the optic nerve" originally published in Italian in 1855. We also review the state of knowledge of the brain around Panizza's time, summarize his career, and consider why his work was ignored.     

Interview with Bertram Schaffner,M.D.

In 2007, the author interviewed Dr. Bertram Schaffner, one of the first openly gay psychiatrists and psychoanalysts of his generation. In this interview, conducted when Dr. Schaffner was 94 years old, he speaks candidly about the educational and career struggles he faced as a gay man at a time when homosexuality could result in a loss of medical licensure. Among other topics, the interview covers Dr. Schaffner's childhood and college years, his army service, his psychiatric practice, his work as a psychoanalyst, and his work as an activist for human rights.     

Lateral inversions and introversion in Ingres

The famous French nineteenth-century painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (17801867) produced in the course of his career several left to right inversions of his own figural compositions. Because according to the narrative imagery conventions of directional viewing both the original and the reversed scenes should be looked at from left to right, the mirror-like reversion results in a dramatic alteration of the scenes' meaning. Considering that the literary topics that Ingres chose for his pictures often had an affective meaning for him, the lateral inversions may have been motivated by a subconscious wish to exorcise traumatic memories.     

Alexander H. Leighton's and Jane Murphy's scientific contributions in psychiatric epidemiology: a personal appreciation

This article introduces the special issue of Transcultural Psychiatry in honour of Alexander Leighton. A sketch of his research career is followed by a discussion of the work of his wife, Dr. Jane Murphy, first on St. Lawrence Island, near the Bering Strait, and later as a key figure in the Stirling County project. A brief conclusion highlights the main aspects of their joint legacy to cultural psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology.     

Russell Brains Review of MS

In 1930 there were many conflicting views on the cause, incidence, precipitating factors, inheritance and treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS). A young, London neurologist summarized the state of understanding of the disease with his personal view of many of the uncertain areas, and clarified the thinking for the neurological community at that time. Although his later career was influential in many fields of medicine, and his personal influence was extraordinary in many areas as an author, educator, administrator, opinion leader and historian, his review was an important milestone in the history of MS.