| Derek E. Denny-Brown was born in Christchurch,
New Zealand in 1901. After earning a degree in medicine from Otago
University in Dunedin, New Zealand in 1924 he won a fellowship to study
in the Oxford laboratory of the world-renowned English physiologist,
Sir Charles Sherrington. While at Oxford, Denny-Brown observed
and defined the distinctive properties of red and white muscles, validated
Sherrington’s theoretical concept of the motor unit, and developed the
technique of antidromic stimulation for the analysis of motor neuron responses.
Upon completing his fellowship Denny-Brown returned to clinical medicine,
and for the remainder of his life applied his skills as a scientist toward
determining the mechanisms underlying diverse types of neurological disease.
He pursued this goal first at the National Hospital, Queen Square, London
and beginning in 1941 as Director of Harvard University’s Neurological
Unit at Boston City Hospital. During his career Denny-Brown
studied and published landmark papers on the neurology of micturition,
effects of closed head injuries, peripheral nerve disorders, vestibular
disturbances, BAL (British anti-lewisite) treatment for Wilson’s disease,
cerebrovascular disease, subacute necrotizing encephalopathy, myoclonus,
seizure disorders, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, nervous system
changes associated with porphyria, myokymia, motion sickness, electromyography,
spasticity, poliomyelitis, hereditary sensory radicular neuropathy, muscle
atrophy, meningitis, apraxia, thiamine deficiency, parkinsonism, cachexia
and pain. His description of a hereditary form of sensory radicular
neuropathy in 1951 resulted in the condition often being termed “Denny-Brown
disease.”
In addition to his clinical work, Denny-Brown studied the effects of lesions of the central nervous system on the reflex behavior of monkeys. Based on these experiments, which over his lifetime involved about 450 monkeys, Denny-Brown published numerous articles and two classic books, The Basal Ganglia and Their Relation to Disorders of Movement (1962) and The Cerebral Control of Movement (1966). Along with being known for his research Denny-Brown is also remembered for his influence on American neurology. He developed a training program in Boston that considered neurology to be more closely associated with internal medicine than with psychiatry, as it had been in the past. Accordingly, in 1952 he published a highly influential paper in the New England Journal of Medicine entitled, “The changing pattern of neurologic medicine.” His training program and views grew rapidly while he was at Boston so that by the early 1960's, of 41 departments of neurology in the United States, 19 had chairmen who had received a major part of their training under his direction at the Neurological Unit. In 1967 Denny-Brown “retired” from Harvard Medical School to begin another productive period as Chief of the Section of Neurophysiology and Associate Director of the New England Regional Primate Center. He retired from this position in 1972 and continued to write until his death from multiple myeloma in 1981. |
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| Denny-Brown’s research materials including surgical records, photographs and films of patients and monkeys have been organized and are currently being used by contemporary scientists (see Vilensky J.A., Gilman S. and Dec E.M. The Denny-Brown Collection: A research and teaching resource. Annals of Neurology 36:247-251, 1994). Further information is available from Dr. Joel Vilensky, Indiana University School of Medicine, 2101 Coliseum Blvd. E., Fort Wayne, IN. 46805 (vilensk@ipfw.edu). |