HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 21the establishment and funding of institutes relating to the particular
disease with which they were concerned, but their individual attempts
failed to convey the significant public health and socioeconomic impact
of these organic diseases of the nervous system as a whole.^13 Even within
the neurological field, there was no consensus as regards the definition
and classification of neurological medicine, whether it was a branch of
internal medicine, an autonomous discipline, or a part of the dominant
neuropsychiatric hegemony of the time.^14
It was not until the late 1940s and early 1950s that these voluntary
health organizations–with the help of prominent ANA members such
as H. Houston Merritt, Tracy Putnam, Hans Reese, and William G.
Lennox, who testified before Congress on their behalf–became power
ful enough to influence legislators.^15 Congressmen Robert Crosser (D),
Percy Priest (R), and Andrew Biemiller (D), however, proposed mini
mizing duplication by creating instead a national institute dedicated to
researching the entire spectrum of neurological disabilities and blind
ness.^16 Although blindness supporters wanted their own institute, neu
rology and blindness were put together in response to political pressure:
Mary Lasker, Congressman Biemiller, whose mother was blind, and
Senator James Murray (D), pushed to introduce blindness into the bill.^17
President Truman’s administration had growing concerns about the
proliferation of disease-focused institutes within the PHS, however.^18
Although encouraging the Surgeon General to coordinate research so
as to discourage such proliferation, the research need and the popular
support behind the bill led Truman to sign the Omnibus Medical
Research Act (Public Law 81-692) on August 15, 1950, establishing the
National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases (NIAMD; today
the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Diseases) and
the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Blindness (NINDB;
today the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke). Both
institutes were formally established on November 22 of that year.^19 The
NINDB would be responsible for conducting and supporting research
and training in the 200 neurological and sensory disorders that affected
20 million individuals in the United States and were “the first cause of
permanent crippling and the third cause of death.”^20