Neurognostics Answer

Authors: Fine, Edward¹; Mehta, Bijal¹; Lohr, Linda²

Source: Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, Volume 20, Number 2, April 2011 , pp. 170-176(7)

Publisher: Taylor and Francis Ltd

Abstract:

Gordon Morgan Holmes, MD, MRCP was an Irish born neurologist who received his medical education at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. He was trained in neuroanatomy and neuropathology at the Senckenberg Institute, Frankfort-Am-Main by Ludwig Edinger. He then returned to serve as a Registrar (House Officer) mentored by Richard Gowers and John Hughlings Jackson at the National Hospital, Queen Square, London. He collaborated with Thomas Granger Stewart in describing the loss of recoil in patients with cerebellar hemispheric tumors in 1904. Volunteering in 1914 for frontline hospital duty, he examined soldiers who had injuries to their occipital area causing hypotonia, dysmetria, staggering gait, and falling to the side ipsilateral to their injured cerebellar hemisphere. Holmes discovered that increasing the pace of the finger-nose manuever and applying slight resistance to a moving limb attenuated the dysmetria. Continuing observation of these patients afforded him to describe the evolution of their injuries to include increasing tremor and decreasing hypotonia. Holmes first attached levers to the limbs of hispatients to record their movements on a moving smoked paper kymograph. In 1939 he published photograh tracings made by low mass minature light bulbs attached to ataxic limbs that showed thehpometira and hypometria of their movements ipsilateral to their damaged cerebellar lobes. Holmes made sigficant contributions to understanding of the physiology of the human cerebellum.

Keywords: ataxia; dysmetria; Stewart- Holmes sign; cerebellum. WW I

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0964704X.2011.560826

Affiliations: 1: The Jacobs Neurological Institute at Buffalo General Hospital, Buffalo, NY, USA,Department of Neurology, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, USA 2: Robert L. Brown, MD, Collection of Medical History, Health Sciences Library, University at Buffalo, The State University, Buffalo, NY, USA

Publication date: 2011-04-01

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