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  • Title: Three 20th-century multiauthored handbooks serving as vital catalyzers of an emerging specialization: a case study from the history of neurology and psychiatry.
    Author: Stahnisch FW, Koehler PJ.
    Journal: J Nerv Ment Dis; 2012 Dec; 200(12):1067-75. PubMed ID: 23197122.
    Abstract:
    Originating in the late 19th century, psychiatry and neurology emerged during a period of several decades as two distinct fields of medical inquiry, separate from the study and practice of internal medicine. Around 1900, the German-speaking countries in Europe played an important role in this development. In this article, the publication of three influential multivolume and multiauthor handbooks are studied. All available volumes of Max Lewandowsky's Handbuch der Neurologie (1910-1914) and the Handbuch der Neurologie (1935-1937) of Oswald Bumke and Otfrid Foerster are analyzed. The handbooks are compared with Pierre Vinken and George Bruyn's Handbook of Clinical Neurology (1968-2002). This article is particularly timely in that it helps to reveal some of the origins of the disciplinary split-even at a moment when "brain psychiatry" (Wilhelm Griesinger), "neuropsychiatry" (Kurt Goldstein), and the German notion of Nervenheilkunde all acknowledged the interdisciplinary nature of both psychiatry and neurology. Particular emphasis is placed on the preeminent role that Jewish clinical neurologists assumed in the editing of the respective handbooks, leading to the extraordinary breadth and wealth of these publications. A great number of doyens in the fields of neurology and psychiatry-among them numerous Nobel Prize laureates-were involved in the dissemination of contemporary knowledge, including diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, which testifies to the fundamental status that these handbooks held for training purposes for both undergraduate and postgraduate students. Finally, the volumes analyzed in this article (between 1911 and 2002) are representative of a shift in the dominant scientific language, from German to English, since the 1930s and the 1940s, as well as the change in geographical distribution of the leading scientific authors, from Central Europe (Germany, Austria, Holland, France, Italy, and Scandinavia) to North America (the United States).
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