30 FARRERAS
fundamental study and understanding of the nervous system and
its functions, such as the nature of the nerve impulse, the mechanism
of synaptic transmission, complex lipids’ routes of synthesis, and the
processes of nerve regeneration.^51 Once the NIH Clinical Center open
ed in 1953, the clinical research program began its work on three major
areas of study: epilepsy, muscle disorders, and eye diseases. Scientists
of both programs collaborated not only with scientists within their
own program but also with the other program, as well as with other
institutes such as the NIMH, the NHI, the NCI, the NIAID, and the
NIAMD, and with non-NIH institutions such as the Army and Navy
Medical Centers, the Mount Alto VA Hospital, and the Physics Division
of the Atomic Energy Commission.^52Notes- Pearce Bailey, “The Present Outlook for Neurology in the United States: A
Factual Evaluation,” Journal of the Association of Medical Colleges 24 (1949):
214-28. For further information on the history of neurology and of the
Association, see Russell N. DeJong, A History of American Neurology (New
Yo rk: Raven Press, 1982); William F. Windle, ed., “The Beginning of
Experimental Neurology,” Experimental Neurology 51, no. 2 (1976): 277
80; D. Denny-Brown, Adolph L. Sahs, Augustus Steele Rose, eds., Centennial
Anniversary Volume of the American Neurological Association (New York:
Springer, 1975); Lawrence C. McHenry, “The Founding of the American
Neurological Association and the Origin of American Neurology,” Annals
of Neurology 14, no. 1 (1983): 153-4. - Pearce Bailey, “National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness:
Origins, Founding, and Early Years (1950 to 1959),” in The Nervous
System: A Three-Volume Work Commemorating the 25th Anniversary of
the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and
Stroke, Vol. 1: The Basic Neurosciences, eds. Donald B. Tower and Roscoe O.
Brady (New York: Raven Press, 1975), xxi-xxxii. - “[Neurology]..., with its patient population with chronic refractory diseases,
its nearly nonexistent therapeutics, and its emphasis on anatomical diagnoses,
almost immediately attacked asylum psychiatry for not curing the insane,
for its unscientific therapies, and for an unproductive preoccupation with
diagnostics. The neurologists, largely excluded from the asylums, maintained
that they could treat the insane more effectively as outpatients and that hos
pitalization, as suggested and practiced by asylum psychiatrists, was both
unnecessary and destructive.” See Jacques M. Quen, “Asylum Psychiatry,
Neurology, Social Work, and Mental Hygiene–An Exploratory Study in