[The founders of neurology. Moritz Heinrich Romberg and Hiroshi Kawahara].
Moritz Heinrich Romberg was born on November 11, 1795 in Meiningen, Thüringen, Sachsen (Germany at present). He had completed his medical studies at Berlin. He was greatly influenced by Johann Christian Reil at the University of Berlin, Johann Peter Frank in Wien, and Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland, the director of das Königliche Poliklinische Institut, Charité Krankenhaus of the University, and devoted himself to the study of nervous diseases. Romberg can be looked on as the first great neurologist in the modern sense of the word, because he began the neurological propaedeutics in Berlin, and published the first systematic book on neurology. The year 1995 is the bicentennial anniversary of his birth. Hiroshi Kawahara was born at Ohmura, Nagasaki, in 1865. His medical studies were pursued at the University of Tokyo under the guidance of Prof. Elwin von Baelz. He was the first neurologist in Japan, to give particular attention to the neurological diseases. In 1897, Kawahara described two brother cases belonging to a family suffering from muscle atrophy, and characterized it as having sex-linked recessive inheritance, adult onset, prominent fasciculation of the tongue and four limbs, and relatively benign course of illness. The Kawahara's paper on this familial disease later known as "bulbo-spinal muscle atrophy" or "Kennedy-Alter-Sung disease" is the first description in the world. The textbook written by him in 1897 is the first publication dealing with a variety of diseases of the nervous system in Japan.
Takahashi
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Nagoya University.
D005858:Germany; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D008297:Male; D009462:Neurology / Q000266:history*