The gap and the bridge between neurology and psychiatry has been the subject of a recent review entitled “Closing the great divide”.¹ The early luminaries of neurology such as Charcot, Babinski, Alzheimer, and Oppenheim also held academic posts in psychiatry and yet the 20th century marked a period of separation between specialities. The “gulf and the bridge” was the subject of a seminal lecture by Sir Dennis Hill, late professor at the Institute of Psychiatry.² This provides essential historical reading for those who wish to know more about physicians, philosophers, the separation of psychiatry from medicine, and the shared ground between the psychiatrist and the neurologist.

This modern …