EDITORIAL

摘要

In 1884, we published a brief account of ‘A new histologicanmethod for the study of nerve-tracts in the brain and spinanchord’ (Brain 1884: 7; 86–88). In this, the 28-year-old author—nstudying structure and development of the medulla oblongatanin the laboratory of Professor Ernst Brucke (1819–1892) havingnqualified in medicine 3 years earlier—had hardened and fixednthe tissue in bichromate of potash and alcohol before stainingnnerve fibres ‘pink, deep purple, blue or even black’ with chloridenof gold. Subsequent use of the technique allowed him to enter thendebate on a reticular versus neural basis for cellular organization onthe nervous system. Lecturing on the subject in the same yearnthe young investigator concluded that: ‘If the fibrils of the nervenhave the significance of isolated paths of conduction, then wenshould have to say that the pathways which in the nerve arenseparate are confluent in the nerve cell; then the nerve celnbecomes the beginning of all those nerve fibres anatomically connnected with it’. The work earned him a lectureship in neuropatholnogy and, late in 1885, a travel grant to visit the famounDr Charcot in Paris. As a result, he changed his professional internest from neurology to psychiatry. In later life, he kept a copy onDr Brouillet’s painting ‘A clinical lesson at the Salpe ˆ trie ` re’ (1887)nconfiding to his daughter when she asked her father about thennature of Blanche Wittman’s ailment that ‘she was too tightlynlaced’.