Rezső Bálint (October 22, 1874 – May 23, 1929) was a

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

- Hungarian

neurologist Neurology (from el, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the brain, the spinal c ...

and

psychiatrist A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry, the branch of medicine devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, study, and treatment of mental disorders. Psychiatrists are physicians and evaluate patients to determine whether their sy ...

. He discovered

Bálint's syndrome Bálint's syndrome is an uncommon and incompletely understood triad of severe neuropsychological impairments: inability to perceive the visual field as a whole ( simultanagnosia), difficulty in fixating the eyes (oculomotor apraxia), and inability ...

. He was born into a German-Jewish family that had settled in Budapest. Rezso Balint’s first writings, published while he was still a medical student, were case studies examining muscular atrophy in hemiplegia. He went on to study tabes dorsalis and the treatment of epilepsy. In 1907, Dr. Balint recorded his observations of a patient who suffered from a unique constellation of neurologic symptoms including fixation of gaze, neglect of objects in his periphery, and misreaching for target objects. The patient was noted to first experience these symptoms following damage to the posterior parietal lobes. This “triple-syndrome complex” was later named “Balint’s Syndrome.” Bálint studied medicine in

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

, graduating in 1897. He habilitated in 1910, became extraordinary professor in 1914 and full professor in 1917. He died of

thyroid cancer Thyroid cancer is cancer that develops from the tissues of the thyroid gland. It is a disease in which cells grow abnormally and have the potential to spread to other parts of the body. Symptoms can include swelling or a lump in the neck. C ...

in 1929.

Selected works

* ''Ueber das Verhalten der Patellarreflexe bei hohen Querschnittsmyelitiden'', 1901 * ''Seelenlähmung des “Schauens”, optische Ataxie, räumliche Störung der Aufmerksamkeit'', 1909 * ''Diaetetikai vezérfonal''. Budapest, 1924 * ''A cukorbetegség és az inzulin''. Budapest, 1927 * ''Ulcusproblem und Säurebasengleichgewicht''. Berlin, 1927. * ''Gewebsproliferation und Säurebasengleichgewicht. Pathologie und Klinik in Einzeldarstellungen''. 1930.

References

Hungarian neurologists Hungarian psychiatrists Austro-Hungarian people 1874 births 1929 deaths Physicians from Budapest {{psychiatrist-stub