The First International Neurology Congress in Bern

Examining the origins of neurology’s annual meeting and its role in the emergence of cinematography.

By Peter J. Koehler and Nadeem Toodayan

The 27th World Congress of Neurology will be held in October in Seoul, South Korea. You may wonder when, where, and how the congress came about and the history of the meeting. The first International Neurology Congress took place in 1931, but bringing it to life was not an easy task.

Figure 1. Newspaper announcement of the congress in the May 16, 1914, issue of Der Bund Morgenblatt (no. 226): “Congress of Neuropsychiatrists. The eighth annual meeting this year of the German Society of Neuropsychiatrist will be organized in cooperation with the Swiss Society of Neurology on Sept. 5 in Bern, before the meeting of the International Congress of Neurology, Psychiatry, and Psychology (Bern, Sept. 7-12, 1914).”

Postponed Due to World War I

Following the successful International Congress for Psychiatry, Neurology, Psychology, and Care for the Insane that was organized in in 1907 in Amsterdam, an international neurological and psychiatric congress was scheduled for September 1914 in the Swiss city of Bern. (See Figure 1.) However, it was canceled when World War I broke out on Aug. 1 of that year.

One of the organizers, Constantin von Monakow (1853-1930), wrote to his Dutch colleague Cornelis Winkler (1855-1941) that his colleagues in Europe were engaged in “obvious national and economic tasks and have other thoughts than discussing scientific questions; and that will probably mean — although we have not yet decided definitely — that the Bern congress that has been prepared so well, will probably not take place.”

Ivan Pavlov at the Bern Congress (1931). Stills from the Ranson film.

Salomon Henschen (public domain).

The International Brain Commission (IBC), founded in 1903, played an important role in organizing these early congresses, which also involved psychiatry and psychology. However, international cooperation collapsed with the outbreak of World War I.

After the war, several members of the previous IBC tried to revive the commission, or to create one like it. Swedish neurologist Salomon Henschen (1847-1930), for instance, tried to found the Academia Neurologica Internationalis (1929). In the 1920s, Winkler tried to convince previous IBC members to resurrect the IBC and suggested that it could even coexist with an international neurological society.

Bernard Sachs and Otto Marburg at the Bern Congress (1931). Stills from the Ranson film.

Vladimir Bekhterev (1857-1927) presided over — and tragically died at — the inaugural All-Russian Congress of Neurology and Psychiatry in December 1927 in Moscow, after making an incautious remark about Stalin, whom he had physically examined. In the same year, American Bernard Sachs (1858-1944) and Austrian Otto Marburg (1874-1948) collaborated to lay the groundwork for the International Neurological Congress in Bern. Altogether, it had taken 17 years (1914-1931) for another congress to be organized.

Honorary Degrees for Cushing and Sherrington

As mentioned in a previous article, it is a pleasure to leaf through the Proceedings of the congress. This was put together by a team of neurologists, including Bernard Sachs (1858-1944) and Henry Alsop Riley (1887-1966) of New York, along with Charles Dubois (1887-1944), R.F. Fischer, and Pierre Schnyder of Bern. It was chaired by Bernard Brouwer (1881-1949) of Amsterdam. The introduction was written in four different languages (English, French, German, and Italian).

Table 1. The World Congress of Neurology has been held in these cities since 1931.

The officers of the congress included President Bernard Sachs and the following vice presidents:

• Otto Marburg (1874-1948; Austria)
• Georges Guillain (1876-1961; France)
• Max Nonne (1861-1959; Germany)
• Sir Charles S. Sherrington (1857-1952; Great Britain)
• Cornelis U. Ariëns Kappers (1877-1946; Holland)
• Ottorino Rossi (1877-1936; Italy)
• Henry Marcus (1866-1944; Sweden)
• Robert Bing (1878-1956; Switzerland)

Sir Charles S. Sherrington (left) and Harvey Cushing at the Bern Congress (1931). Stills from the Ranson film.

It is interesting to observe that not all of them were clinical neurologists. Sherrington, for instance, was a neurophysiologist and Ariëns Kappers a neuroanatomist. The term neurology was broader in those days than it is today.

The congress was held at the Casino of Bern, and the opening ceremonies took place on Monday, Aug. 31, 1931. In the opening address, “the senior of this congress, Prof. Iwan Petrowitsch Pawlow” (1849-1936) was welcomed. He was 82 years old at the time. Two honorary doctor of medicine degrees were awarded: one to Sir Charles S. Sherrington and the other to leading American neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing (1869-1939).⁷

Relation of Neurology to General Medicine and Psychiatry

Even in 1931, neurology was not yet considered an independent medical specialty in many countries. A special symposium was therefore organized on Friday, Sept. 4, at the Bellevue-Palace Hotel. The topic was the “Relation of Neurology to General Medicine and Psychiatry in Universities and Hospitals of the Various Countries.”

After a discussion of the situation in various participating countries, the assembly voted on the following resolution, proposed by German neurologist and neurosurgeon Otfrid Foerster (1873-1941):

“Neurology represents an entirely independent specialty in medicine. Unfortunately, this fact has not been sufficiently recognized in various countries. The First International Neurological Congress hopes that the universities and hospital authorities of the various states will take active steps to further the progress of neurology.”

The resolution was carried unanimously.⁷

Table 2. Female participants and speakers of the congress.

Female Participants

At the end of the Proceedings, we find a list of the 890 “Active Members of the Congress,” who were mainly men (only 30 were women). There is also a list of 220 “Affiliated Members,” who were mainly women.

Only six of the 30 female Active Members were among the 247 speakers. (See Table 2.) One of them was Yvonne Sorrel-Dejerine (1891-1986), the famous French neurologist and scion of the Dejerine neurological family. Another speaker, Frenchwoman Gabrielle Lévy (1886-1934) was the subject of an earlier World Neurology article. Nathalie Zand (1883-1942) became a Nazi victim in 1942.

More information on the female participants will follow in a future World Neurology history column.

Neurological Cinematography

In a review titled “Neurological Illustration: From Photography to Cinematography,” author Genevieve Aubert details how cinematography developed from photography in the late 19th century:

“The background setting for what would become modern moving pictures was definitely scientific: the Collège de France and the University of Pennsylvania. It was certainly not by chance that two of the most important neurological centers of the epoch were immediately associated.”

Two contributors were particularly important in this respect: the physiologist Étienne-Jules Marey (Paris; 1830-1904) and the photographer Eadweard Muybridge (Philadelphia; 1830-1904). Both were interested in the science of animal locomotion and pioneered “chronophotography.” The invention of nitrocellulose roll film in 1885 was also a significant breakthrough, as large numbers of instantaneous photographs could now be compactly stored and later projected.

Although projecting reconstructed images and screening films for the public was not Marey’s goal, his findings appealed to several inventors, including the Lumière brothers, who in March 1895 showed the first film for a paying audience. And so modern cinematography was born, opening “a new era for the study of movement and gait in neurology.”⁸

The method was soon applied in neurological clinics by neurologists in several countries. These included:

• Paul Schuster (1867-1940) in Berlin
• Gheorghe Marinescu (1863-1938) in Romania
• Walter Greenough Chase (1859-1919) and Theodore H. Weisenburg (1876-1934) in the United States
• Camillo Negro (1861-1927) in Italy
• Arthur van Gehuchten (1861-1914) in Belgium
• Rudolf Magnus (1873-1927) and Gijsbert Rademaker (1887-1957) in the Netherlands.

Owing to the practical impediments of early filmmaking technologies, there was not much filming done outside of universities and other early academic centers of neurology. The first handheld movie camera (the aeroscope) was invented in 1909, but it wasn’t until after the Eastman Kodak company brought out its 16mm Ciné-Kodak model (the world’s first successful home movie camera) in July 1923 that there was a notable rise in the production of early amateur neuroscience films.

Polish neurologist Nathalie Zand
(public domain).

Otfrid Foerster at the Bern Congress (1931). Stills from the Ranson film.

These early films include Kinnier-Wilson’s 1924-25 films of movement disorder patients at Queen Square, films of Bekhterev examining hypnosis patients in Russia, historical footage of Harvey Cushing’s 2,000th brain tumor operation in April 1931, and rare motion pictures of Ivan Pavlov and Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852-1934) late in life.

The Australian neurologist and photographer Edward Graeme Robertson (1903-1975), who served two terms as regional vice president of the World Federation of Neurology (WFN), was also interested in cinematography. He recorded important neurological personalities throughout his life, starting with a historical 1933 film of National Hospital staff at Queen Square. The broader intersection between neurology and the art of narrative film, including “the fictionalization of neurologic disease,” is extensively covered by Eelco Wijdicks in his recent book, Neurocinema…A History of Neurology on Screen (2022).

Both “lantern slides” and cine-film clips were used to illustrate presentations at the Bern Congress. Walter Freeman (1895-1972), for example, used lantern slides to show the effects of “fungus infections of the central nervous system.” (This was some years before his infamous work on lobotomy.) Eber Landau (1878-1959; Kaunas, Lithuania) gave a microscopical demonstration.

Several speakers used cinematography to illustrate their investigations. These included: László Benedek (1887-1945; Debrecen, Hungary), Paul Jossmann (1891-1978; Berlin), Gonzalo Rodríguez Lafora (1886-1971; in cooperation with J. Sanz; Madrid), Th. B. Wernöe (Copenhagen), Otto Marburg (Vienna), and F. de Quervain (1868-1940; Bern).

Stephen W. Ranson at the Bern Congress (1931). Stills from the Ranson film.

Participants Filmed by Ranson

One of the participants and speakers at the congress was Stephen Walter Ranson (1880-1942) from Chicago. Following his longstanding interests in hypothalamic research, Ranson presented the “Results of Stimulation of the Mesencephalic Tegmentum With the Horsley-Clarke Stereotopic Apparatus.” Although he was an amateur filmmaker, he did not use cinematography for his presentation. He did, however, film delegates at the 1931 congress, and a rare recording made by him has recently resurfaced.

Born in Dodge Center, Minnesota, Ranson graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1902. He went to Chicago University, where he earned his MD (1903) and PhD (1905) under Henry Herbert Donaldson (1857-1938). He was a Fellow in neurology at Chicago from 1904 to 1906 and received his medical degree at Rush Medical College in 1907. He became associate in anatomy at the Northwestern University Medical School. After spending about a year in Freiburg, Germany (1910-1911), he became professor of anatomy at Northwestern University in 1912.

Following some years in other institutions, he returned to Northwestern University to direct the Institute of Neurology in 1928. He was author of many publications, including The Anatomy of the Nervous System (1922). He was also a world-renowned expert on hypothalamic physiology, having led much research into its functional mechanisms. Among his pupils was Horace W. Magoun (1907-1991), who, in cooperation with the Italian neurophysiologist Guiseppe Moruzzi (1910-1986), discovered the Ascending Reticular Activating System (ARAS) in 1949.

Two reels of film were recorded by Ranson and are cataloged by the Archival and Manuscript Collections of Northwestern University. The films have been deposited on the Internet Archives website for research purposes. Although not all of those in attendance appear in the recordings, the films do provide unique images of several well-known and less well-known neurologists, neurosurgeons, physiologists, psychiatrists, and their partners at the historic congress.

Ranson started filming on the steamship Lafayette sailing from New York to the French port of Le Havre. He likely filmed participants during breaks at the congress. It is also likely that he filmed during an excursion to Interlaken, about 55 km southeast of Bern, and the Schynige Platte, which can be reached by train. All recorded participants can be seen in these remarkable films; Some of the better-known personalities are shown here in rarely seen film-stills from the congress. (See Figures 2a-c and Table 3.)

Fig. 2a

Fig. 2b

Fig. 2c

    Table 3. Names of the participants depicted in Figures 2a-c.

Conclusion

Several specialists, including anatomists and physiologists, contributed to the success of the first International Neurology Congress in Bern, Switzerland, which presented a major milestone in the emancipation of neurology from internal medicine and especially psychiatry.

Moreover, the congress helped platform the emerging importance of cinematography as a valuable tool in neurology — not only in the study and presentation of clinical material, but in the preservation of historical images of significant physicians who were present at the congress. •

Peter J. Koehler is a member of the faculty of health, medicine, and life sciences at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. Nadeem Toodayan is a physician trainee in the neurology department at Monash Medical Centre in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.