Mind, Brain, Body, and Behavior

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 65

NINDB Intramural Clinical

Research Program

During an American Medical Association meeting in Denver, Colorado,
Pearce Bailey recruited G. Milton Shy, a young neurologist, to be direc­
tor of the NINDB clinical research program (and chief of the Medical
Neurology Branch within that program) and Maitland Baldwin, a
neurosurgeon, to be chief of the Surgical Neurology Branch. Both men
were alumni of the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI^1 ) and, at the
time, had positions at the University of Colorado. They arrived at the
NIH on May 1, 1953; their salaries that first year came out of the Mus­
cular Dystrophy Association funds.^2 Once the NIH Clinical Center was
opened, the NIMH had allocated some of its laboratory and clinical space
to the NINDB, and the development of the NINDB intramural clinical
research program became possible in late 1953. With Bailey’s and Baldwin’s
interest in epilepsy and Shy’s interest in neuromuscular disease, former
colleagues and alumni of the MNI were quickly hired to build a clinical
program around those two areas.^3 Four branches eventually comprised
the intramural clinical research program of the NINDB: the Medical
Neurology Branch, the Surgical Neurology Branch, the Electroenceph­
alography Branch, and the Ophthalmology Branch.
The first two branches to be established were the Medical Neurology
and Surgical Branches, headed respectively by Shy and Baldwin. Shy’s
Medical Neurology Branch focused on neuromuscular diseases, specifi­
cally their detection and abnormalities as well as the mechanisms leading
to them.^4 It was one of the largest branches in the program and consisted
of six sections: Clinical Neurochemistry (Donald B. Tower, Chief ),
Clinical Applied Pharmacology (Richard L. Irwin, Chief ), Clinical
Neurophysiology (Paul O. Chatfield and later José del Castillo, Chiefs),