Vincenzo Neri and His Legacy in Paris and Bologna

Italian neurologist Vincenzo Neri was able to discover cinematography at the beginning of his career, when in 1908 he went to Paris to learn and improve his clinical background by following neurological cases at La Pitié with Joseph Babinski, who became his teacher and friend. While in Paris, Neri photographed and filmed several patients of famous neurologists, such as Babinski and Pierre Marie. His stills were published in several important French neurological journals and medical texts. He also collaborated with Georges Mendel, who helped Doyen film the first known surgical operation in the history of cinema. In 1910, when he came back to Bologna, he continued in his clinical activities and, for 50 years, slowly developed a huge archive of films, images, and prints of neurological, psychiatric, and orthopedic cases. This archive was extremely helpful to Neri, who especially needed to analyze neurological disorders and to differentiate them from functional conditions in order to understand clinical signs, rules, and mechanisms.