Jules Dejerine

DEJERINE, Jules (1849–1917), a famous French neuropathologist, anatomist, and clinician. He began his scientific work under the guidance of Vulpian and under the great influence of Charcot and Duchenne de Boulogne. For a time, he held the chair of history of medicine, and in 1910, after the death of Raymond, he occupied the chair of nervous diseases in Paris and was subsequently elected a member of the Academy of Sciences. Dejerine's works concern many questions of clinical neurology and the anatomy of the nervous system. Among Dejerine's clinical works, his book co-authored with A. Thomas, Traité des maladies de la moelle épinière (Paris, 1902), and Sémiologie des affections du système nerveux (Paris, 1911; reprinted several times)—a manual representing exceptional interest due to the richness of its material and clarity of exposition—achieved particularly wide renown. Together with his student G. Roussy, Dejerine first identified the thalamic symptom complex, describing the sensory disturbances characteristic of thalamic lesions and the classic 'main thalamique.' Together with another student, E. Gauckler, Dejerine published a large monograph dedicated to psychoneuroses, Les manifestations fonctionnelles des psychonévroses, leur traitement par la psychothérapie (Paris, 1911; Russian edition, Moscow, 1912). In this monograph, Dejerine developed and defended the idea of the fundamental significance of emotive shocks in the etiology of hysteria. He returned to this same thought repeatedly in a series of articles during the World War regarding the nature of traumatic neuroses. Together with Landouzy, Dejerine described a specific type of progressive muscular dystrophy, and together with Sottas, a specific nosological form—'hypertrophic progressive interstitial neuritis of childhood.' Dejerine's works in the field of the study of aphasia are of great importance. In 1892, he determined the localization of the lesion in word blindness (the so-called Dejerine center in the gyrus angularis). He identified a special aphasic symptom complex—pure, or subcortical, aphasia. Among Dejerine's anatomical works, one must first point to his classic monograph Anatomie des centres nerveux (v. I-II, Paris, 1901). Among the special questions developed by Dejerine in this field, one can especially point to the question of secondary degenerations after damage to the cerebral cortex, the course of the loop, the 'fibres aberrantes de la voie pédonculaire,' the pyramidal tract and the site of its origin, the ratio of the direct and crossed pyramidal bundles, the nuclei of the anterior horns of the spinal cord, etc. His wife, Dejerine-Klumpke, took a very close part in Dejerine's work, and especially in the creation of the Anatomie des centres nerveux. Besides the anatomical works shared with her husband, her works on diseases of the peripheral nervous system should be especially noted. As early as 1883, she described a symptom complex known at the present time as Dejerine-Klumpke syndrome: paralysis of the lower part of the brachial plexus. Furthermore, her works on lead paralysis are known. Finally, during the years of the World War, she described, in collaboration with her husband and Mouzon, the syndromes of damage to large nerve trunks arising after gunshot wounds.