Pride of place in the first century or so of Dutch neurology must go to the basic sciences of anatomy and physiology. These were my first points of contact with the Dutch neurological tradition, now almost 50 years ago. To the fledgling investigator working on propriospinal reflexes, Ariens Kappers et al’s The comparative anatomy of the nervous system of vertebrates including man (New York, Macmillan, 1936) was the place to turn for the structural background to physiological experiments. And in physiology, the work …