Beevor’s Sign

He was also appointed to the Great Northern Central Hospital in 1885. He obtained the London MD, and was elected FRCP in 1888. He concentrated his efforts on the then topical localisation of cerebral functions [3] , working for 4 years with Sir Victor Horsley. From 1884 to 1890, Horsley was professor-superintendent of the Brown Institute for Animals in Wandsworth Road, where Beevor collaborated and achieved a high reputation. His lifelong friend, Sir Charles A. Ballance (1856–1936), was also involved in his work on cerebral localisation in primates [4] . His clinical work continued and he published a highly regarded Handbook on Diseases of the Nervous System in 1898. With another neurologist, Armand de Watteville, he described the jaw jerk refl ex in 1885. The fi rst patient was a woman with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis who had an increased jaw jerk 1 , which he demonstrated by introducing ‘a tongue depressor or paper knife in the mouth’ and striking ‘either object with a thin bound book or best of all with a percussion hammer’. Charles Edward Beevor may not be amongst the bestremembered neurologists, but the eponymous sign he discovered is, to this day, commonly found in neurological, neurosurgical, physical medicine and orthopaedic writings. Paradoxically, Beevor left much more signifi cant legacies to neurology on cerebral localisation and the blood supply to the brain. Beevor’s sign is said to be characteristic of a cord lesion at the T 10 level, but is also described inter alia in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and in facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy [1] : ‘When a patient sits up or raises the head from a recumbent position, the umbilicus is displaced toward the head. This is the result of paralysis of the inferior portion of the rectus abdominal muscle, so that the upper fi bres predominate pulling upwards the umbilicus’. Beevor [2] was born in London on June 12, 1854 to Charles Beevor, FRCS, surgeon, and Elizabeth (née Burrell). He attended Blackheath Proprietary School and read Medicine at University College, London, qualifying MRCS, LSA in 1878. He trained at University College Hospital and at the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic (Queen Square) before working in Vienna, Leipzig, Berlin and Paris for further experience. Erb, Cohnheim and Weigert were among his tutors; we can imagine that their concentration on the nervous system encouraged him to seek the appointment of assistant physician at Queen Square on his return to England in 1883. Received: March 16, 2005 Accepted: March 16, 2005 Published online: July 5, 2005