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On the Transmission of Dementia: A personal view of the slow virus problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

J. A. N. Corsellis
J. A. N. Corsellis*
Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, London SE5 8AF
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Extract

I came across Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease within a few weeks of starting work in the neuropathological laboratories at the Maudsley Hospital. The time was the 1940's, and Alfred Meyer, who had known both Creutzfeldt and Jakob in Germany, had already published his study on the possible link between amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (or spastic pseudosclerosis of Jakob as it was then called). Meyer's interest in the condition was therefore well known to British psychiatrists and neurologists, and patients who were thought to be suffering from this illness were referred to him. Routine post-mortem examinations would be duly carried out, perhaps by the psychiatric staff, and the brain, sometimes with the spinal cord, would be hardened in formalin and sent in a parcel to the Maudsley laboratories.

Type
Papers
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 134 , Issue 6 , June 1979 , pp. 553 - 559
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1979 

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