国际神经康复杂志

Evolution of Neurology in the German-Speaking Countries

Abstract

Hansruedi Isler

In this region 18th century brain research met with scientist’s prejudice against causal interaction of body and soul. Advances in neurology had to rely on rather mythological ideologies such as Phrenology and Vitalism which revived localizing research from the 17th century origins of neurology. In the early 1800s the last great Vitalist, Johannes Müller, set off an explosion of progress in biology that transformed medicine and neurology into applied biology and replaced Müller’s Vitalism by hardline Mechanism. Later in the 1800s the typical Germanic neuro-psychiatrists developed psychiatry and completed cerebral localization, finally obtaining the divorce of neurology from psychiatry.