Botticelli and the Babinski sign

Excerpt

In 1896, Joseph Françoise Félix Babinski (1857–1932) a Polish born but French educated neurologist, working at the Hôpital de La Salpetriêre in Paris, described in a 26 line presentation at a meeting of the Societé de Biologie his “phenoméne des orteils”, that is the isolated dorsal flexion of the great toe shown by subjects with an injury, not necessarily structural, to the pyramidal tract in response to the stroking of the sole of the foot. In the place of the normal plantar reflex (clenching of the foot with the toes downward), such a sign had been already reported 3 years before by Ernst Julius Remak, but Babinski was the first to fully realise its clinical importance. In 1903, Babinski completed his recognition of the phenomenon by describing the associated fanning of the other toes. He also noted that it could be found in healthy infants. Actually, such a response is, nowadays, regarded as a physiological reflex up to 2 years of age. Although Babinski referred to the abnormal dorsal extension of the big toe as “the great toe sign” and indicated as Babinski’s sign, the failure of the platysma muscle to contract on the side of a hemiparesis, currently the dorsiflexion of the hellus, possibly associated with the fanning of the toes in response to plantar stimulation, is generally called Babinski’s reflex, an eponym which has become a classic in neurology. …