Disorders of the nervous system — stroke, epilepsy and dementia, where localising the lesion is half the work.
12 topics · 13 curated works
No prior grounding assumed.
An Essay on the Shaking Palsy
James Parkinson · 1817
Describes six cases of a tremor-and-rigidity syndrome he calls paralysis agitans, isolating it as a distinct disease from the general palsies it had…
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
Assessment of Coma and Impaired Consciousness: A Practical Scale
Graham Teasdale & Bryan Jennett · 1974
Proposes scoring eye, verbal and motor response separately rather than assigning one descriptive label, producing a reproducible numeric measure of…
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Primary sources and full treatments.
Lectures on the Diseases of the Nervous System Delivered at La Salpêtrière
Jean-Martin Charcot · 1877
Correlates clinical symptoms observed at the bedside with lesions found at post-mortem to define sclérose en plaques (multiple sclerosis) as a…
+5 more at this level
12 of 13 works
James Parkinson
Describes six cases of a tremor-and-rigidity syndrome he calls paralysis agitans, isolating it as a distinct disease from the general palsies it had previously been lumped with.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Graham Teasdale & Bryan Jennett
Proposes scoring eye, verbal and motor response separately rather than assigning one descriptive label, producing a reproducible numeric measure of impaired consciousness that became the Glasgow Coma Scale.
Thomas Brott et al.
Introduces a standardised bedside scoring scale for stroke severity, designed to be reproducible across examiners so that neurological deficits can be tracked and compared between patients and over time.
Maureen C. Jensen, Michael N. Brant-Zawadzki, Nancy Obuchowski, Michael T. Modic, Dennis Malkasian & Jeffrey S. Ross
Finds disc bulges, protrusions and degeneration on MRI in most people who have never had back pain, arguing that an abnormal-looking scan is often an incidental finding rather than the cause of a patient's symptoms.
W. Ian McDonald et al.
Sets out criteria combining clinical attacks with MRI evidence of lesions disseminated in time and space, letting multiple sclerosis be diagnosed earlier than waiting for a second clinical attack allowed.
World Health Organization
Argues neurological disorders impose a large and growing global burden that is systematically under-recognised, and calls for integrating their care into general health systems rather than treating them as a rare specialist concern.
link checked 17 Sept 2026World Health Organization
Argues that most countries have no funded plan for dementia despite its rising prevalence, and tracks progress against the WHO's own 2017-2025 global action plan targets.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Jean-Martin Charcot
Correlates clinical symptoms observed at the bedside with lesions found at post-mortem to define sclérose en plaques (multiple sclerosis) as a distinct disease with its own triad of signs, founding the method of lesion-localisation that modern clinical neurology still uses. English translation of Charcot's 1872 Salpêtrière lectures.
link failing as of 17 Sept 2026William Richard Gowers
Systematically catalogues seizure types and their causes from thousands of case records, establishing a clinical classification that shaped how epilepsy was diagnosed for a century.
link checked 17 Sept 2026National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke rt-PA Stroke Study Group
A randomised trial found that alteplase given within three hours of ischaemic stroke onset significantly improved disability outcomes at three months despite a higher rate of early brain haemorrhage.
Benjamin Rix Brooks, Robert G. Miller, Michael Swash & Theodore L. Munsat
Revises the diagnostic categories for ALS to weigh electromyographic evidence of denervation alongside clinical signs, aiming to enrol more homogeneous and earlier-stage patients in clinical trials.
Roger Stupp et al.
Reports a randomised trial showing that adding temozolomide chemotherapy to radiotherapy extends survival in glioblastoma, establishing the regimen that became the standard first-line treatment.