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On the classification, natural history and treatment of the myopathies, by John N. Walton and F.J. Nattrass (From the Department of Medicine, King's College, University of Durham and the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle upon Tyne). Brain 1954: 77; 169–231.
Writing in an era when the classification of neurological disease required astute clinical description supplemented, when available, by pathological examination, and long before different disorders could be defined on the basis of genetic mutations, John Walton and Professor Nattrass use 105 cases of muscle disease to propose an entirely new classification for the muscular dystrophies. First, they set out their stall with a searching historical review, sifting wheat from the chaff in the early descriptions and categorisations. Starting with Aran in 1850 and Meyron in 1852, the difference gradually emerged between familial disorders having ‘granular degeneration of the voluntary muscles’ and sporadic cases of muscular atrophy resulting from ‘changes in the
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