AJMONE-MARSAN 151Mind, Brain, Body, and Behavior
I. G. Farreras, C. Hannaway and V. A. Harden (Eds.)
IOS Press, 2004
Clinical Neurophysiology and
Epilepsy in the Early Years of
the NINDB Intramural Program*
Cosimo Ajmone-Marsan
A detailed description of the events leading to the creation of a neurologi
cal institute within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the early
fifties, as well as a recounting of the original organizational decisions,
professional staffing, and research program outlines through 1959, were
provided by the first institute director, Pearce Bailey.^1 Historical data
on the development and growth of the institute were contributed by the
subsequent institute directors: Richard L. Masland^2 for the years 1959 to
1968 and Edward F. MacNichol, Jr.,^3 for the period from 1968 to 1973.
To summarize briefly Bailey’s chronicles, the creation of the original
National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness was officially
authorized in 1950 and its first director was nominated in the fall of 1951.
The institute entered the active planning stage in 1952 with an original
budget of less than 2 million dollars. In 1953, there was a sensible increase
in the financial appropriations, and clinical and laboratory space were al
located in the new Building 10, the NIH Clinical Center. The institute
was officially opened at the end of that calendar year, making it possible
to inaugurate a program of intramural clinical investigations.
The philosophical basis of this intramural program–and essentially of
analogous programs in all other NIH institutes–was unique and original.
The Clinical Center was not a primary or even a specialized care center.
- This account is a revised version of the article “National Institute of Neurologi
cal Diseases and Stroke, NIH: Clinical Neurophysiology and Epilepsy in the
First 25 Years of Its Intramural Program,” Journal of Clinical Neurophysiology 12
(1995): 46-56, reprinted with the permission of Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.