Department History

THE HISTORY OF NEUROLOGY AT THE MASS GENERAL

A number of major medical and specifically neurologic discoveries have been contributed by the physicians and scientists at the hospital. Included among the many recent neurologic "firsts" achieved at the hospital are the discoveries of the genetic markers, or the actual mutations, which give rise to Huntington's disease, familial amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, familial Alzheimer's disease, and neurofibromatosis. Magnetic resonance functional neuroimaging was advanced by the development of the “BOLD” technique as well as the bolus-tracking method for brain perfusion imaging. The Neurology department was started in 1912 under the direction of James Jackson Putnam. Dr. Raymond Adams became the chief of Neurology in 1951, Dr. Joseph Martin in 1979 and Dr. Anne B. Young in 1991.

THE HISTORY OF NEUROLOGY AT THE BRIGHAM

The Brigham and Women's Hospital is the product of a 1975 merger among three eminent Boston academic centers:  The Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (1913), the Robert Breck Brigham Hospital (1914) and the Boston Hospital for Women, itself the result of a merger of the Boston Lying-In Hospital (1832) and the Free Hospital for Women (1875).  As the medical/surgical member of the founding institutions, it was in the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital that neurology took root.

When the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital opened in 1913, Harvey Cushing was named the surgeon-in-chief.  Cushing, the founder of modern neurosurgery, stayed at the Brigham until 1933.  During the Cushing era, Henry Christian was the physician-in-chief, during which time there was no neurologist on the staff.  When Soma Weiss succeeded Christian as the Hersey Professor and Physician-in-Chief at the Brigham, he recruited John Romano, then at the Boston City Hospital, together with Eugene Stead and Charles Janway to be on the full-time faculty; Stead for general medicine, Janwey for infectious diseases and Romano for neurology and psychiatry.  For the next three years, Houston Merritt, also from the Boston City Hospital, made Tuesday afternoon rounds with John Romano on all the neurological patients identified during the week.  In 1941, George Engel arrived at the Brigham where his studies with John Romano on delirium and syncope grew into what was to be the birth of psychosomatic medicine in North America, work that was then continued by Drs. Romano and Engel at the University of Cincinnati and the University of Rochester.  Throughout the rest of the 1940s and early 1950s,  neurological consultations were carried out by a number of distinguished neurologists including Augustus Rose, Derek Denny-Brown, and Raymond Adams all based at the Boston City Hospital.  Dr. Roy Swank, a specialist in multiple sclerosis based most of his practice at the Brigham until the mid-1950s.  In 1956, George Thorn, the Hersey Professor and Physician-in-Chief who had succeeded Soma Weiss, recruited H. Richard Tyler to become the first truly full-time neurologist at the Brigham.  Dr. Tyler had completed his internship at the Brigham followed by neurological training under Derek Denny-Brown at the Boston City Hospital.  Dr. David M. Dawson joined Tyler shortly thereafter, followed by H. Harris Funkenstein in stroke and Mark Hallett, the founding director of the clinical neurophysiology laboratories.

During the Tyler era, the neurology division remained in the department of medicine, but grew impressively with the addition of a major basic research program lead by Dennis Selkoe in Alzheimer disease and Howard Weiner in multiple sclerosis.  From the early 1960s onward The Brigham was part of the Harvard Longwood Neurology Training Program which graduated many of the leaders of academic neurology including, Dennis Choi, Michael Moskowitz, Howard Weiner, Dennis Selkoe, Michael Goldberg, Steven Sergay, Marc Dichter, Stuart Lipton, Arnold Kriegstein, Stefan Pulst, Jeffrey Buchalter, Bruce Korf, Jeffrey Saver, Steven Warach, and Orla Hardiman.

In 1988, Martin A. Samuels succeeded Tyler as neurology division chief and in 1995 an independent Department of Neurology was created at the Brigham.  Partners HealthCare system was created in 1995 with its anchor academic medical centers of the Brigham and the MGH.  The Partners Neurology Training Program began shortly thereafter, graduating its first cadre of residents in 2000. 

Today the Brigham Department of Neurology is a very large and complex entity with 225 members divided into 10 clinical divisions and a major basic, clinical and translational research program, housed in about 40,000 square feet of laboratory space and funded by more than $10,000,000 indirect costs annually.  There is an active acute neurology inpatient service plus a 20 bed neurological intensive care unit.  The Brigham Department provides the neurology services for the Faulkner Hospital and the Dana Farber Cancer Center and maintains a close liaison with the Children's Hospital's Department of Neurology which is physically connected to the Brigham and provides pediatric neurology coverage to the Brigham's busy neonatal intensive care unit.  Current Brigham Department of Neurology division Chiefs are:  Steven Feske (Stroke); Galen Henderson (Critical Care);  Anthony Amato (Neuromuscular); Edward Bromfield (Epilepsy); Patrick Wen (Cancer Neurology); Kirk Daffner (Behavioral Neurology); Don Bienfang (Neuro-ophthalmology); Thomas Walshe (General Neurology); Lewis Sudarsky (Movement Disorders); Howard Weiner (Multiple Sclerosis);  Dennis Selkoe (Neuroscience)

For pictures and more information about the history of MGH Neurology see the 1999 Grand Rounds by Dr. Raymond Adams and C. Miller Fisher as well as the description of the history of neuropathology at the MGH by Dr. Elliot Richardson.