Henry Charlton Bastian ( 1837 – 1915 ) : Neglected Neurologist and Scientist

Henry Charlton Bastian was born in Truro, Cornwall. He graduated in 1861 at the University College, London, where he worked most of his life. He was one of the first neurologists appointed to the National Hospital, Queen Square. There, he conducted original investigations and pursued wide interests both in medical and biological sciences. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1868. In addition to his reputation as a neurological diagnostician and intellectual, he became an advocate of the vexed doctrine of abiogenesis. Copyright © 2010 S. Karger AG, Basel In the first half of the 19th century, despite a few notable contributions of Charles Bell, Marshall Hall, and Robert Bentley Todd, neurology in Britain had become relatively stagnant [1] . The foundation of the ‘Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic’ (later named: National Hospital for Nervous Diseases) in 1859, was prompted by the remarkable labours of two sisters, Louisa and Johanna Received: November 2, 2009 Accepted: November 2, 2009 Published online: January 5, 2010 J.M.S. Pearce 304 Beverley Road Anlaby, East Yorks HU10 7BG (UK) © 2010 S. Karger AG, Basel 0014–3022/10/0632–0073$26.00/0 Accessible online at: www.karger.com/ene Pearce Eur Neurol 2010;63:73–78 74 appointed Professor of Pathology and Assistant Physician at UCH. His rapid ascent tells of his unusual ability. He successively became Professor of Clinical Medicine, UCH Medical School, and Assistant Physician to the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic (1868), then full Physician (1887). He was one of a select band including Gowers and Hughlings Jackson, who pioneered scientific neurology. For over 40 years he served at the National Hospital (1868 until retirement in 1912). At the same time he pursued his interest in bacteriology experiments, which he conducted behind a screen in his consulting room at 8A Manchester Square, London. In 1866 he married Julia Augusta Orme; they were to have three sons and one daughter [2] . Ironically, despite a brilliant and varied career [3] , his life ended in poverty [4] . After he retired, Bastian’s clinical practice declined. Jellinek recounts [3, 4] how financially straitened, he was forced to move to a small mortgaged house in the Chilterns. He had received a pension from neither his London hospitals nor university appointments. Eventually, his colleague Sir James Crichton-Browne, with support from the influential geologist Sir James Geikie, a former President of the Royal Society, Sir Thomas Barlow, President of the Royal College of Physicians and Sir William Ramsay, a distinguished chemist, wrote to Asquith, who was Prime Minister. Bastian eventually received a Civil List pension in 1914. It is condign that his legacy endures. As one of the first consultants at Queen Square, his influence on neurology was considerable. His studies encompassed not only natural history and theories of the origins of life, but also clinical aspects of hysteria, new concepts of the aphasias, and original anatomical observations. For almost 30 years he advanced his credited views of the ‘kinaesthetic cortex’. Bastian’s ideas on abiogenesis were at the time the object of derision, yet in the light of discoveries of the last 60 years, the principles he espoused have prompted more recent scientific enquiries.