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Essay on the origin and evolution of neuropathology

Some fundamental neuropathologic contributions to psychiatry

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Conclusions and Summary

An attempt has been made here to summarize briefly the characteristic aspects, trends and objectives of neuropathology. Through study of the past, in the sequence of historical background and continuity, the construction and relationship of neuropathology to psychiatry, and to other concurrent medical, and other scientific, thought, have been traced from the science's early development into the perspective of the future.

Like medicine in general, and particularly like neuropsychiatry, neuropathology has also passed, during its seesaw evolution, through empirical, theological and metaphysical stages. With the development of other medicobiological sciences, especially neuroanatomy and neurophysiology, and following the introduction of microscopy and new histologic techniques, neuropathology has gradually abandoned superstitions, arbitrary hypotheses and speculations—to replace them with the scientific approach and with experimental investigations.

Through the Renaissance up to the present time, neuropathology has continued to maintain its intimate bonds with neurology and psychiatry, while on the other hand it has established closer relationships with cytophysiology and pathology.

By turning the focus of its histochemically and biophysically reinforced light toward the future, neuropathology aims to penetrate depths hitherto unexplored.

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  1. Department of Neuropathology, New York State Psychiatric Institute, 722 West 168th Street, New York 32, N. Y.

    L. Roizin M.D.

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  1. L. Roizin M.D.
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From the Department of Neuropathology, New York State Psychiatric Institute, and the Department of Pathology, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York, N.Y. Presented in part at the psychiatric staff meeting of Rockland State Hospital, June 2, 1954 and in part at the meeting of clinical directors, Albany, October 13, 1954.

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Roizin, L. Essay on the origin and evolution of neuropathology. Psych Quar 31, 531–555 (1957). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01568748

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