PIONEERS IN NEUROLOGY

JO N 94 The name of Von Monakow is associated with a few structures in the central nervous system (including the rubrospinal tract and the nucleus funiculi cuneati externus), a reflex on the lateral aspect of the foot [1], comparable to Babinski’s reflex, the syndrome following infarction in the area of the anterior choroid artery, and the concepts of diaschisis and chronogenic localisation. Who is he and what did he do? Constantin von Monakow was born in 1853, the youngest child of four in a noble family in Wologda, north of Moscow, Russia. His mother died in 1858 and his father, a lawyer, often travelled abroad. In 1863 the family moved to Germany for political reasons and three years later to Zurich, because of the threat of the Prussian-Austrian war. In 1868 the family received Swiss civil rights. Following the Gymnasium, he started to study medicine in 1872. In 1876 he worked under Eduard Hitzig (1838–1907) in Burgholzli, the psychiatric asylum in Zurich and later he stayed with Bernhard von Gudden (1824–1886) in Munchen. In the beginning of the following year he graduated and started a practice in Zurich. In 1878 he became physician at a convalescent and nursing home St. Pirminsberg, where he started research using the secondary degeneration technique and applying the microtom that had been invented by Von Gudden. Performing partial brain ablations in new-born rabbits, he studied the course of the visual pathways and the thalamocortical tracts. In the autumn of 1880 he married Mathilde Rudio, with whom he had three children. He presented lectures and made several study tours, e. g. to Berlin where he stayed for three months, meeting Hermann Munk,who had published on cortical blindness. In 1885 he moved back to Zurich, where he presented his thesis on the optic tracts and centres. He started a private practice as well as a neuroanatomic laboratory, where he started building a collection of neuroanatomical preparations. In 1887 he decided to start an outclinic for nervous diseases. He received coworkers from other cities and later from all over the world, including Donaldson (USA), Brouwer and Valkenburg (Netherlands), Fuse (Japan), etc. In 1894 Monakow became professor e. o. at the new chair of “brain anatomical subjects and outclinic for nervous diseases”, much against the wish of his colleagues at the medical faculty. In the meantime he worked on a book on brain pathology that was published in 1897 [2]. He started a literature study club for neurology and psychiatry, attended by Bleuler and Jung. His institute became the official brain anatomical research institute following evaluation by the Received: 23 October 2001 Accepted: 2 November 2001