It is perhaps timely to consider briefly a topic that should be of real interest to neurology as a specialty. For the purpose of dramatizing it to some extent this subject may be designated as neurologia irredenta. The term irredenta supplied much of the propulsive power to the forces culminating in the Great War, and the aspirations contained within it played a preponderant rôle in the remaking of the maps of Europe. The redemption of territories which were the spoils of previous wars was one of the most powerful influences swaying peoples and parliaments.
Neurology, too, has her irredenta, spheres of activity and of influence which should be hers, but which have for one reason or another fallen under the control of related branches of medicine. It is not, however, of necessity, that an irredenta should become such a realty through conquest. In many instances, other factors may be operative