Chapter 38: American neurology

The great formative event in the history of North America, the Civil War of 1861 to 1865, was the stimulus for the development of clinical neurology and the neurosciences. The first neurological research center on the continent was the US Army hospital at Turner's Lane, Philadelphia, PA. Silas Weir Mitchell and his colleagues described causalgia (reflex sympathetic dystrophy), phantom limb sensation, and Horner's syndrome (before Horner). The medical leader of the Northern army was William Hammond. After the conclusion of hostilities, he began a huge clinical practice in New York City. In the United States, clinical neurology began in private practice, unlike Europe, where neurology began in institutions. Hammond's textbook, which first used the term athetosis, was used by a generation of physicians who encountered patients with neurological signs and symptoms. Early in the 20th century, neurological institutions were formed around universities; probably the most famous was the Montreal Neurological Institute founded by Wilder Penfield. The US federal government sponsored extensive research into the function and dysfunction of the nervous system through the Neurological Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness, later called the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke. The government officially classified the final 10 years of the 20th century as the Decade of the Brain and provided an even greater level of research funding.