History of the Harvard Neurology Department at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
The Denny-Brown Years at Boston City Hospital
In 1939, Derek Denny-Brown was appointed to the Putnam Chair and Head of the Harvard Department of Neurology at Boston City Hospital, but World War II intervened, and he was not able to settle permanently in Boston until after the war. The Harvard Boston City Neurology Residency under Denny-Brown trained a succession of leaders of academic neurology both in the US (Joseph Foley, Philip Dodge, H. Richard Tyler, Simon Horenstein, Simeon Locke, Norman Geschwind, Daniel Drachman, Donald Reis, David Dawson, Sid Gilman, Tom Sabin, Robert Feldman, and Louis Caplan) and in England (Roger Bannister, Ian McDonald). In 1950, Raymond Adams left Denny-Brown’s Department to start a Neurology training program and eventually a second Department of Neurology, based at Massachusetts General Hospital.