Two original articles in the field of sleep medicine published in 1932 and 1934 by the authors from the Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade (on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of neuropsychiatric service in Serbia).

Articles originating from the first part of the 20th centry in the field of neurology and psychiatry by Serbian authors preserved in original are rare. We present two articles written by two Professors from the Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade, Serbia, (Prof. Dr. Vladimir F. Vuji , 1932, and Prof. Dr. Dimitrije T. Dimitrijevi , 1934) dealing with the problems in sleep, a topic very popular in the first half of the past century. Although their results are now a part of history, the idea and methodology are still attractive. The article by Prof. Vuji presents original research dealing with the measurement of pressure cerebrospinal liquor during sleep in patients with different diagnoses with the idea that a single disease may have a characteristic graph of a change in liquor pressure. The paper by Prof. Dimitrijevi reports a patient with narcolepsy indicating medical attitudes on narcolepsy in Serbia prior to the Second World War. There is only a small number of preserved original articles in the field of neurology and psychiatry, printed before the Second World War by the Serbian medical doctors. We present two of the articles. The first was written in 1932 by Prof. Dr. Vladimir Vuji from the University Clinic for Mental and Nervous Diseases in Belgrade, titled “Sleep and the liquor pressure. A contribution to the physiology and pathology of sleep“ . The second article was written in 1934 by Dr. Dimitrije T. Dimitrijevi from Belgrade, titled “Contribution to the knowledge about traumatic narcolepsy” . Both articles may be read or reprints taken from the History Section of the Serbian Somnologic Society web site . The author of the first article, Prof. Dr. Vladimir F. Vuji , studied medicine in Paris and Prague. He finished the specialization in neuropsychiatry in 1925 in Vienna as a student of Prof. Dr. Julius Wagner Ritter von Jauregg, a Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine in 1927. At the end of the Second World War in 1945 as the first director of the Neuropsychiatric Clinic, Prof. Dr. Laza Stanojevi retired, he became the Director and was immediately elected Vice Dean of the Medical Faculty of Medicine. He also became a Full Professor and head of the cathedras for neurology, psychiatry and medical psychology (from 1945 to 1953). Professor Dr. Vladimir F. Vuji published in 1932 in Vienna the article in German Language titled “Schlaf und Liquordruck, Beitrag zur Physiologie und Pathologie des Schlafes” (Figure 1) (the publisher was famous 'Verlag von Julius Springer aus Wien'). The study was performed at the University Clinic for Mental and Nervous Diseases, the director at that time being Prof. Dr. Laza Stanojevi ('Universitätsklinik für Geistes – und Nervenkrankheiten; vorstand Professor Dr. L. Stanojevi , Belgrade, Serbien'). It was printed as a special issue on 16 pages, as a separate from the first of the three volumes of the 49. of the Yearbook for Psychiatry and Neurology (Sonderabdruck aus Heft 1/3, Band 49 der Jahrbücher für Psychiatrie und Neurologie) . The text contains 20 tables with comments. Unfortunately, the pages with the literature used by Prof. Vuji in this article are not preserved. Prof. Vuji delivered oral presentation of the same title in Vienna, on November 8, 1932.