The November 2018 issue of The Lancet Neurology includes a historical profile of Augusta Dejerine-Klumpke written by Vijay Shankar Balakrishnan.
Here are some excerpts from the article:
“She was a person who did not take no for an answer,” said Lynda Jun-San Yang, a neurosurgeon at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI, USA), praising Déjerine-Klumpke’s passion for research.
Together with her husband, she experimented on different serial sectioning methods of the brain, and drew extraordinary sketches of normal and pathological brains. From these sketches, the Dejerines reconstructed the three-dimensional structures of the brain with special emphasis on the subcortical regions. Together, they published the seminal treatise Anatomie des Centres Nerveux(Anatomy of the Central Nervous System), a celebrated classic of neuroanatomy. Although Déjerine-Klumpke was credited only as a collaborator, the treatise was mainly written and illustrated by her, says Poirier. “[It] brings many new data, principally about different connecting bundles in the central nervous system [and] her anatomical findings are still valid today.”
many are not aware of her other contributions or her personal historical background, according to Shane Tubbs, neuroanatomist at the Seattle Science Foundation (WA, USA). “Her name has hung around based on only one of the few contributions she made over a hundred years ago, but she is a pioneer in many aspects of neurology and she should be remembered for all of her contributions,” concluded Tubbs.
Read also our profile of Augusta Déjerine-Klumpke
