Vinken and Bruyn's Handbook of Clinical Neurology. A witness of late-twentieth century neurological progress

Vinken and Bruyn's Handbook of Clinical Neurology (HCN) is best characterized as an encyclopedia. In this paper we describe the origin, production, and reception of HCN. Data were gathered from a literature search, by screening of HCN-volumes, interviewing key-role persons and a study of an HCN-archive. The initiative for HCN was taken by two Excerpta Medica staff members, the one a strategist with expertise in information systems, the other a gifted neurologist with an expert knowledge of who is who in the world of neurological literature. Within a period of 38 years, 2799 authors, 28 volume editors, the two initiators, and a third chief editor for the American continent described the whole of neurology in 1909 chapters on all together 46,025 pages (excluding index volumes). HCN was sold mainly to medical institutes in affluent countries. A digital version of the revised edition was proposed by the editors but refused by the publisher for commercial reasons. HCN was in general well received by book reviewers. The main criticisms concerned the price of the volumes, lack of editorial control, inadequacy of indexes, and lack of cross references. HCN offers unrivalled information on the state of the art of the clinical neurosciences in the second half of the twentieth century. In addition, it contains extensive reviews of the history of neurological diseases in the volumes of the original edition.     

A Short History of the Notion of Neurodegenerative Disease

The notion of heredity of degenerative constitutions of human beings contributed in the nineteenth century to the fear for deterioration of the human race and in the twentieth century to attempts by several Western Countries, particularly Germany, to improve the inborn qualities of their populations by eugenic measures. In the years following World War II, the term eugenics was eradicated from medicine. The qualification degenerative disappeared from genetics and psychiatry but remained in use to denote decay of tissues and cells. The adjective neurodegenerative came in vogue in neurology and was mostly applied to brain diseases. Definitions in the literature indicate that neurodegenerative diseases are considered as to be age related, incurable, and largely untreatable chronic progressive diseases of the central nervous system. Scrutiny of available data shows that the notion concerns an ill-defined group of genetic and idiopathic disorders. Genetic central nervous system diseases may become manifest at all ages and are accessible for symptomatic treatment. Investigations of animal models suggest that not all neurodegenerative diseases are inherently incurable. Alternatives for the terms neurodegenerative and degenerative are available.