NeuroTalk Support Groups - The discovery of Dystonia

DR. HERMANN OPPENHEIM (1858-1919)

Hermann Oppenheim was born on 1st January 1858 in Warburg, Germany.

After completing medical school showed great interest in physiology and later psychiatry. He visited the universities in Berlin, Gttingen and Bonn, and started his career at the Charit-Hospital in Berlin as an assistant of Carl Westphal.

He published on tabes dorsalis, bulbar paralysis, lead interaction with associated neuritis, alcoholism, anterior poliomyelitis, syphilis, multiple sclerosis and even traumatic neurosis.

In 1890 he opened his own center for clinical neurology. He wrote effusively on brain tumors, syphilis of the brain, and in 1911 coined the term "dystonia muscular in deformans."

Oppenheim opened a successful private-hospital in 1891 and wrote a book about nervous diseases in 1894 which soon became a standard in his profession.

He was a great clinical neurologist, a great diagnostition, but he was also a fine therapist. His description of amyotonia congenita- or Oppenheim's Disease is a fitting monument to this great scientist.

He died on 5th May 1919 in Berlin.

The term dystonia musculorum deformans, coined by the German neurologist Hermann Oppenheim (1858-1919) in 1911, was criticized by Flatau and Sterling (1911) because fluctuating muscle tone was not necessarily characteristic of the disorder, the term musculorum incorrectly implied that the involuntary movement was due to a muscle disorder, and not all patients became deformed. They highlighted the genetic nature of the disorder and suggested the term progressive torsion spasm.