Babinski

BABINSKI, Joseph, born in 1856 in Poland, one of the outstanding contemporary neurologists, a student of Charcot. He completed his medical studies in Paris, where his subsequent scientific and teaching activities took place: "Médecin des hôpitaux de Paris", honorary member of the Society of Neurologists and Psychiatrists in Paris, founder of which he is (1899), as well as of the journal "Revue neurologique", editor of which he is; member of the Paris Academy of Sciences and the Society of Biologists in Paris. To B. belong about 300 works; there is no area in neurology in which he has not worked. Works by B. on the following questions are particularly well known: he described (1896) the reflex (see Babinski reflex), which has enormous diagnostic significance; B. holds one of the leading places in identifying the symptom complex in cerebellar disease; symptoms described by him - adiadokokinesis, asynergy, catalepsy, hypermetria, mouvements désérés - have become classical for determining the cerebellar localization of disease. Many works by B. are devoted to the study of protective reflexes, which he used to determine the localization of tumors in the spinal cord (its lower border). In France, B., one of the first (1911), applied surgical intervention in tumors of the spinal cord.

Besides the reflex, he described a number of symptoms that allow differentiation between organic hemiplegia and functional hemiplegia. In the teaching on hysteria (see), B. has his own views: he believes that the symptoms observed in it appear and disappear as a result of suggestion (autosuggestion and heterosuggestion). B. proposed to replace the word "hysteria" with the word "pithiatism" as corresponding to one of the main symptoms. During the war, Babinski worked extensively in the study of reflex disorders (troubles d'ordre reflexe) - local forms of angiotrophoneuroses that occur after minor trauma, producing prolonged irritation and causing vascular spasm. B. enjoys great popularity as a lecturer; lectures he organizes for the improvement of doctors attract a huge number of both French and foreign doctors.