THE committee responsible for the preparation of the program of this National Conference on Education in the Neurological Sciences has assigned three topics to be considered by the conference, namely, teaching in basic neurological sciences, teaching in clinical neurological sciences, and the special challenge presented by the gifted students.
Before we start the consideration of these topics, it would be desirable to consider briefly the factors which have contributed to the developments in the past 20 years.
Although the brain has been the subject of speculation from antiquity, our knowledge of the relationship of paralysis, sensory loss, or other signs of dysfunction to disease or damage to specific portions of the nervous system is less than 100 years old. It is interesting to quote from an article by James Hope in 1840:
The diseases of the brain are, at the present moment, more obscure than any great class in