Article Text
Historical note
Binswanger’s “encephalitis subcorticalis chronica progressiva”
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Otto Binswanger (1852-1929), Professor of Psychiatry in Jena, in 1894 described eight patients with a progressive dementia punctuated by apoplectiform focal attacks whose brains showed diffuse or patchy but selective white matter atrophy, most marked in the temporo-occipital regions with ventricular dilatation. He called it“encephalitis subcorticalis chronica progressiva”. His original description is often misquoted but Förstl’s translation now makes Binswanger’s work accessible1:
CLINICAL CRITERIA (p 1184)
“The disease begins at the onset of senility (early in the fifties) or in advanced old age (early in the sixties);
“slow impairment of intellectual capabilities manifesting primarily by …