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Foster Kennedy (1884-1952)
ANA President in 1940, Foster Kennedy emigrated to the US from Ireland. He presciently warned ANA members of the impending danger of the Nazi regime. Photograph of Foster Kennedy, M.D., from the National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD. |
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The American public felt the impact of neurological disease when United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt died suddenly on April 13, 1945, from cerebral hemorrhage. He had suffered from uncontrolled hypertension and had been paraplegic from 1921 due to paralytic poliomyelitis.
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Franklin D. Roosevelt & Neurological Disease
President Roosevelt led the United States as a paraplegic and is shown here (seated) congratulating MacArthur in 1944. |
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During 1945, the majority of neurological publications in Allied Countries related to war injuries, exposure to heat and cold, aviation medicine and clinical neurophysiology. Derek Denny-Brown (1901-1981) immigrated to United States from England to become Physician-in-Chief of the Harvard Neurology Service at Boston City Hospital in 1941. He and Doherty stretched peroneal nerves of anesthetized cats and produced epineural hemorrhages, swollen axis cylinders and beading of the myelin. Their observations accounted for the peripheral nerve dysfunction from high velocity gunshot wounds that passed through adjacent tissue.
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Neurological Injuries of War
Among the major areas of neurological research related to the peripheral nervous system was the impact of high velocity gun shot wounds and neurological sequelae of extreme heat and cold. These European soldiers fighting on the Germany front in 1942 were among the thousands who suffered permanent clinical impairment or died. |
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Victims of the Nazi killing machine did not die entirely in vain; from Leo Alexander's testimony in 1946, responsible scientists devised the Declaration of Helsinki recommendations to prevent harmful experimentation without informed consent.
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The Testimony of Leo Alexander
Leo Alexander (1905-1980) escaped from potential Nazi oppression in his native Austria in 1932 and became a part of the Harvard Medical faculty in 1934. In 1938 he taught neuropathology to Drs. Sahs and Forster. In 1945, Dr. Alexander interrogated former Nazi physicians and testified that they killed mentally incapacitated persons or performed research on concentration camp inmates without their consent such as this Polish woman. Photograph of Leo Alexander, M.D. courtesy of Michael Shevell, M.D., Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The second photograph shows Jewish deportees arriving at Auschwitz, Poland, in 1940. |
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A.B. Baker began his campaign for an inclusive neurological academy that would serve members from the beginning of residency through emeritus status and provide educational opportunities to level the playing field by providing courses to overcome weakness in training programs. He recruited other young neurologists including: Russell DeJong of University of Michigan, Francis Forster then of Thomas Jefferson University (Philadelphia), and Adolph Sahs of University of Iowa. Baker and these three colleagues became known as the Four Horsemen of the American Academy of Neurology. The first scientific meeting of the AAN was held at in 1948.
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The Four Horsemen
AB Baker, R DeJong, F Forster and A Sahs were responsible for the founding of the American Academy of Neurology and became known as "the Four Horsemen". |
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