Josef Gerstmann

Biography

• Born on 1887
• Died on 1969

Austrian neuropsychiatrist who studied at Vienna and then became first assistant to von Jauregg in the Viennese Psychiatric Clinic. During the World War I, he served in the medical corps

in the Italian Alps, attending to a number of soldiers and

others who had suffered brain damage incurred in avalanches.

He later became professor and head of the neuropsychiatric

unit in Vienna in 1928 but emigrated to

America 10 years later to escape Nazi persecution. There

he held senior posts in clinical and research psychiatry

in Maryland, Washington, and New York.

His earlier work was on the cerebral pathology accompanying

paralyses, and he published a book on the

malarial treatment of general paresis of the insane. He

described finger agnosia in 1924, and the full syndrome,

now named for him, 6 years later. The French ophthalmologist

Antoine-Jules Badal (1840–1929)

Medical Eponyms

Gerstmann syndrome

autotopagnosia; finger agnosia

Gerstmann syndrome 2

A paranoid psychosis with auditory hallucinations in patients with general paresis of the insane, as a result of malarial therapy, described by Gerstmann in 1924.

Major Publications

• Gerstmann J. Fingeragnosie: Eine umschriebene Störung der Orientierung am eigenen Körper. Wiener klinische Wochenschrift 1924; 37: 1010–1012 [Gerstmann syndrome 2]
• Gerstmann J. Über ein noch nicht beschriebenes Reflexphänomen bei einer Erkrankung des zerebellaren Systems. Wiener medicinische Wochenschrift 1928; 78: 906–908
• Gerstmann J. Zur Symptomatologie der Hirnlasionen im Ubergangsgebiet der unteren Parietal-und mittleren Occipitalwindung. (Das Syndrom: Fingeragnosie, Rechts-Links-Storung, Agraphie, Akalkulie). Nerveniarzt 1930; 3: 691-5.

References

Biography

• Triarhou LC. Josef Gerstmann (1887-1969). J Neurol. 2008 Apr;255(4):614-5. 
• Triarhou LC. Josef Gerstmann (1887–1969). Brain masters of Vienna

Eponymous terms

Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker disease

• Liberski PP. Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker disease. Adv Exp Med Biol. 2012;724:128-37. 
• Zeidman LA, Ziller MG, Shevell M. Gerstmann, Sträussler, and Scheinker: the persecution of the men behind the syndrome. Neurology. 2014 Jul 15;83(3):272-7.

Gerstmann syndrome

• Zeidman LA, Ziller MG, Shevell M. “With a smile through tears”: the uprooted career of the man behind Gerstmann syndrome. J Hist Neurosci. 2015;24(2):148-72.
• Rusconi E. Gerstmann syndrome: historic and current perspectives. Handb Clin Neurol. 2018;151:395-411.
• Rusconi E, Cubelli R. The making of a syndrome: The English translation of Gerstmann’s first report. Cortex. 2019 Aug;117:277-283