Neuropathology History: Désiré Magloire Bourneville (1840-1909)

Désiré Magloire Bourneville (1840-1909)

Born in Garenciéres, France. From 1905 until his death, Bourneville headed the Foundation Vallée for the Study of Feebleminded Children.  "Was recognized as the leading continental authority on all aspects of mental abnormality of children. Most of his neuropathologic work was on idiocy. His description of tuberous sclerosis, since known as Bourneville's disease, appeared in 1880."

Source: Haymaker, Webb (Army Institute of Pathology). Guide to the exhibit on the history of neuropathology. Presented at the annual meetings of the American Psychiatric Association (Washington, DC, May 17-20, 1948) and the American Neurological Association (Atlantic City, June 14-17, 1948).

Neuropathology History: Sir Edward Farquhar Buzzard (1871-1945)

"Born in London... Became Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University, and consulting physician at St. Thomas's Hospital (1928). In the field of neuropathology, he is well known for his textbook in collaboration with Greenfield (1921)... Important also were his studies on myasthenia gravis (to which he contributed the term 'lymphorrhages') (1905), chronic progressive cerebral softening (1906),... delayed traumatic apoplexy (1909), and epidemic encephalitis (1919)."

Sir Edward Farquhar Buzzard (1871-1945)

Source: Haymaker, Webb (Army Institute of Pathology). Guide to the exhibit on the history of neuropathology. Presented at the annual meetings of the American Psychiatric Association (Washington, DC, May 17-20, 1948) and the American Neurological Association (Atlantic City, June 14-17, 1948).

Neuropathology History: Carl Wernicke (1848-1905)

"Born in Tarnowitz, Poland... A highly original thinker, he can be said to have been a pupil only of Meynert, though he was greatly influenced by the works of Hitzig and Munk."

Carl Wernicke (1848-1905)

Source: Haymaker, Webb (Army Institute of Pathology). Guide to the exhibit on the history of neuropathology. Presented at the annual meetings of the American Psychiatric Association (Washington, DC, May 17-20, 1948) and the American Neurological Association (Atlantic City, June 14-17, 1948).

Addendum: Comment from Dr. Darren Groh from Rhode Island Hospital: "Technically, Carl Wernicke was not born in Poland. He was born in the Kingdom of Prussia, which was part of Germany during his lifetime. This area is now part of Poland, however. I appreciate the history articles."

Guest Post: Fibrous Bodies Nicely Demonstrated in a Smear from a Somatotroph Pituitary Adenoma

Christian Davidson, MD

Dr. Christian Davidson, director of neuropathology at the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Jersey, provides today's blog post:

A 30-year-old man presented with bitemporal hemianopsia and a 3.0 cm pituitary mass was discovered upon MRI. His IGF-1 was elevated to 900, but he had no signs of acromegaly. A smear of tissue sent for frozen section evaluation (see below) revealed that most cells had round, eosinophilic, perinuclear inclusions suggestive of fibrous bodies (some examples are circled). Dot-like CAM5.2 immunostain (not shown) confirmed my smear-based diagnostic suspicion.

Pineal Parenchymal Tumor of Intermediate Differentiation, WHO grade III

"A tumor of the pineal gland that is intermediate in malignancy between pineocytoma and pineoblastoma and is composed of diffuse sheets or large lobules of monomorphic round cells that appear more differentiated than those observed in pineoblastoma." -- WHO Book (2016)

The particular example depicted above recurred with leptomeningeal spread.