Reviewing multiple sclerosis.

In recent years, publishers have responded to the need for publications that summarize complex topics but formerly the review article was less popular, and students of neurological medicine then depended more on textbook accounts of diseases affecting the nervous system. No work has so dominated the 20th century and influenced neurologists in the English speaking world as Russell Brain's Diseases of The Nervous System. When John Walton took on the task of completing the 7th edition, published in 1969, 'Brain' had been continuously in print since 1933; he subsequently produced the 8th and 9th editions, in 1977 and 1985, respectively, and with colleagues is now preparing the 10th edition. Thus, Lord Brain and Lord Walton have reviewed developments in clinical neurology over a period in which more has been learned about the nervous system in health and disease than at any other time in history. One reviewer, opining that the 8th edition represented excellent new wine in an old and valued bottle, drew attention to the therapeutic shifts catalogued by 'Brain' down the 20th century. In 1933, the symptoms of Parkinson's disease could be alleviated by riding in a motor car; in 1992, this requires striatal transplantation of fetal mesencephalic neurones. The observations that have been made and the task ofdistinguishing fact from fiction so as best to document the accumulation of knowledge has probably been more difficult with respect to multiple sclerosis than for any other aspect of clinical neuroscience.