Ali Christy, MD, PhD Profile picture
Jun 16, 2022 10 tweets 5 min read Read on X
One of my favorite #histmed stories is the discovery of EEG by Hans Berger in the 1920s. #NeuroTwitter

At age 19, Berger (1873-1940) fell off a horse. On the same day, his sister, miles away, sent a telegraph to ask if he was doing ok. 1/10
He was fine, but he thought he had communicated his frightened thoughts about getting hurt to his sister by telepathy. He decided to study psychiatry, to learn more about inter-brain communication. 2/10
Berger wanted to measure the "psychic energy" that, he thought, tied us all together. He wrote about the "radioactivity of the brain," he studied circulation, he measured temperature of the brain during mental exertion (in a 23 yo patient with a gunshot wound to the head) 3/10
Berger knew that Richard Caton (1842-1926) published in 1875 on electrical currents in rabbit brains that changed when you shone light into the eyes.
He was looking for something like this: a reaction of the brain to strong stimulation (like falling off a horse) 4/10
Berger built a home EEG, with needles that inserted in the periosteum😱, and used his kids, Klaus and Ilse, as test subjects (this is not recommended). Here's Ilse's EEG at rest, calculating, and answering the calculation. 5/10
The first official EEG was July 6th, 1924, during a neurosurgery on a 17 yo boy. Berger then developed non-invasive techniques. In 1929 he published "Über das Elektrenkephalogramm des Menschen," mentioning alpha and beta waves - terms we still use today. 6/10
Berger was, however, known for working in isolation, believing passionately in telepathy - and in short, being a little nutty. EEG didn't really become accepted until "Berger rhythms" were shown by other neurologists in 1934. 7/10
Was Berger a Nazi? Well...like Asperger, his relationship to the Nazi party was complicated, but assuredly collaborative. Zeidman describes this nicely here @JChildNeurol: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11… 8/10
The EEG is a flawed test - it measures electrical activity mostly in the superficial neurons of the cortex, and has pretty low sensitivity, as tests go. It's still one of our best tools for diagnosing and classifying epilepsies. 9/10
Can you read someone's thoughts on EEG? Patients ask this a lot! Once a Lyft driver (who had never seen an EEG), told me that I could - if I was intuitive.
The answer is no. Your thoughts are your own, unless you choose to share.
Sorry, Dr. Berger (but thanks for the EEG). 10/10

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Dec 1, 2022
Meet the Luminaries from EndowedChairs.com, a card game created with
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#NeuroTwitter #gamedev #histmed
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Luminary #5: Isabelle Rapin (1927-2017)
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Isabelle Rapin is the perfect Luminary to discuss today, because she was born December 4🎂and was a founding member of the @ChildNeuroSoc in 1973 in #Nashville (where everyone is going for #AES2022).
Peds neurologists know why she has a pinwheel on her card - do you? 2/🪑 Image
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Nov 29, 2022
Happy birthday (November 29) to the Father of Neurology, Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893)!

I wouldn't say we're best friends exactly, but yeah, we used to hang out in Paris together.
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Charcot was a neurologist in Paris in the late 1800s, when neurology was developing as a field. He was the 1st chair of neurology, and was a celebrity doctor at the time (this is a poem written and published in the newspaper after his death in 1893). 2/8 Image
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Nov 29, 2022
Meet the Luminaries from EndowedChairs.com, a card game created with @zach_london

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Luminary #4: Dorothy Russell (1895-1983)
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Hands up if you used this textbook! The 7th edition of "R&R" was published in 2007.
You may have known that this was written by eminent neuropathologist Dorothy Russell, but did you know she had epilepsy? 2/🪑 Image
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Nov 17, 2022
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Luminary #1: Sarah McNutt (1839-1930)
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In 2002, Horn and Goetz published this excellent paper on McNutt - the 1st woman elected to the American Neurological Association (@TheNewANA1) - and her work with other early female physicians, including the Blackwells. n.neurology.org/content/59/1/1… 2/🪑 Image
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Sep 3, 2022
Here's a fun story about the earliest known neurological text: the Edwin Smith Papyrus. #histmed #NeuroTwitter #NeuroHistory

Edwin Smith, born in Connecticut, lived in Egypt in the late 1800s. An antiquities dealer, he bought a papyrus in 1862 that he was unable to translate.
Smith died in 1906, and his daughter donated the scroll to the New York Historical Society.
In 1920, Egyptologist Caroline Ransom Williams found it and recognized its worth. She wrote to her mentor James Henry Breasted and asked him to translate it. brewminate.com/the-contributi… Caroline Ransom Williams, in cap and gown
Ransom Williams felt she was too occupied with family to take it on.
“The papyrus is probably the most valuable one owned by the Society and I am ready to waive my interest in it, in the hope that it may be published sooner and better than I could do it.” [November 22, 1920] Caroline Ransom Williams, in black and white, on a ladder, r
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Aug 17, 2022
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This was huge! Everyone wanted patulin to treat colds.
So what happened? 3/6 A newspaper clipping:  Patu...
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