[The thalamic syndrome of Déjérine-Roussy. Prolegomenon]

Predicted by Dejerine and Long in 1898 and formally described by Dejerine and Roussy in 1906, the "thalamic syndrome" corrected the wrong hypothesis of a capsular "sensory cross roads" suggested by Charcot after 1873 and supported in France during 25 years. Both established the "persistent frank organic hemianesthesia" (sensory-sensitive for Charcot, pure sensitive for Dejerine), namely that a sensory deficit, still severe after regression of the early hemiplegia, could be due to focal brain damage. At that time such a clinical concept was hardly acceptable because it opposed the classic greek philosophical idea that sensation and movement should not be separated. Moreover, intelligence was at that time looked as a four-stage process including sensation, imagination, intellect and memory. The very first step began with the "sensus communis", an anteroom-like where all the sensations simultaneously perceived were coordinated to ensure mind unity. This "sensus communis" was given many subcortical seats during the following centuries, such as the trigone (Herophilus), the ventricles (Founders of the Church, Soemmering), the pineal body (Descartes), the striate bodies (Willis) and, finally, the thalamus (Todd and Carpenter's "English theory"). The description by Meynert in 1871 of a transcapsular direct "sensory bundle" and the cases reported by Türck in 1859 of a sensory-sensitive hemianesthesia after a posterior capsular lesion (in fact, thalamo-capsulostriate) led Charcot to develop his theory after 1873. Owing to the new staining methods of Weigert and Marchi introduced around 1885, Dejerine showed in 1895 the route of the medial lemniscus and his arrival in the thalamus, which led him to postulate in 1898 a "thalamic syndrome" and later to demonstrate it.