Abstract Details

Review publications of Morris Lewis, Charles Beevor, Armond deWatteville, to determine chronology to determine priority.  Search  English language textbooks 1880-1910, Mills’ The Nervous System and its Diseases. Worldcat for chin, jaw, masseter reflexes, Archives of Royal Society of Medicine, Wartenberg’s Examination of Reflexes.

Lewis published in 1882 “a new reflex of a sudden elevation the lower Jaw following a blow upon the lower teeth or chin…produced by striking the parts mentioned with a rubber plexor....The mouth of the patient is open and the muscles should be relaxed". Lewis observed this reflex in 2 cases of spastic paralysis, 1 each of hemiplegia and cerebral tumor.  in 1886 Beevor reported jaw clonus in a woman with “ wasted forearm muscles due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. deW appended “the phenomenon was observed in a case in America”.  The mandibular reflex or ”jaw Jerk”  was obtained by placing a tongue depressor on lower jaw  teeth and striking it. Richard Gowers credited Lewis' publication in a footnote in his Diseases of the Nervous System, but erroneously dated it in 1886. British textbooks credited deW and/Beevor more than Lewis.  Mills, a fellow Philadelphian, recognized Lewis for discovery of the masseter reflex.  Lewis and his rivals recognized that the jaw jerk or masseter reflex were true tendon reflexes.  Gowers wrote in a note in the Archives  that deWateville was a charlatan!

As neurology emerged from medicine as a specialty, neurologists strove to distinguish themselves by defining their examinations with reflexes named for themselves sometimes by ignoring a prior discovery.