Charles Miller Fisher, un grande de la neurología

Abstract

C. Miller Fisher MD, one of the great neurologists in the 20th century, died in April 2012. Born in Canada, he studied medicine at the University of Toronto. As a Canadian Navy medical doctor he participated in World War II and was a war prisoner from 1941 to 1944. He did a residency in neurology at the Montreal Neurological Institute between 1946 and 1948, and later on was a Fellow in Neurology and Neuropathology at the Boston City Hospital. In 1954 he entered the Massachusetts General Hospital as a neurologist and neuropathologist, where he remained until his retirement, in 2005. His academic career ended as Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. His area of special interest in neurology was cerebrovascular disease (CVD). In 1954 he created the first Vascular Neurology service in the world and trained many leading neurologists on this field. His scientific contributions are present in more than 250 publications, as journal articles and book chapters. Many of his articles, certainly not restricted to CVD, were seminal in neurology. Several concepts and terms that he coined are currently used in daily clinical practice. The chapters on CVD, in seven consecutive editions of Harrison's Internal Medicine textbook, are among his highlights. His death was deeply felt by the neurological community.