TOWER 295Mind, Brain, Body, and Behavior
I. G. Farreras, C. Hannaway and V. A. Harden (Eds.)
IOS Press, 2004
The 1950s Clinical Program
at the NINDB^1
Donald B. Tower, M.D., Ph.D.
We have had 50 good years of research since April of 1953 when
G. Milton Shy and Maitland Baldwin arrived at the National Institutes
of Health (NIH) to start the clinical program at the National Institute
of Neurological Diseases and Blindness (NINDB, today the National
Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke). The points of emphasis
that I would like to make are four or five. First of all, the original contin
gent to the NINDB’s clinical program came primarily from the Montreal
Neurological Institute (MNI). It was the largest single group of Mon
trealers in training that went anywhere. Wilder Penfield established
the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University in 1934, and
he operated a very successful institute during and after World War II.
The NINDB began mostly as part of the NIH intramural program,
as authorized congressionally in 1951. Neurology in the United States,
Canada, Mexico, and Europe was at a nadir at that time. Training in
neurology was restricted to a handful of places. There was an argument,
very active especially in government, as to whether programs should be
in neuropsychiatry or in neurology and psychiatry separately. Pearce
Bailey was head of the Navy neurology program in Philadelphia and
after the war he was chosen to head the neurology program in the United
States Veterans Administration (VA). This gave him an opportunity to
begin, in a very small way at the VA hospitals around the country, the
resurrection of neurological training and neurological services. To start a
program at the NIH in the new Clinical Center, he turned to Montreal
and invited Shy and Baldwin to come. They, in turn, invited those of
us who comprised the initial contingent.