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Patients with protracted complaints after neck sprains (whiplash) continue to pose diYculties for physicians, expert witnesses, and the Courts.Strict definition is essential for clear and objective thinking. Courts are often misled by experts' reference to publications that do not adhere to critical criteria. The term "whiplash" is confusingly used both as a shorthand for a description of the injury mechanism-a flexion-extension, or torsional movement"-and more correctly for symptoms better designated neck sprains.

Few topics provoke so much controversy or heated opinion, based on so little fact as whiplash injuries. In emergency departments, orthopaedic, neurological and rheumatological clinics, and not least in the Courts, this common syndrome is shrouded in mystery and creates clinical insecurity in those who attempt to explain its mechanism, its prognosis and treatment. These problems are compounded in medico-legal practice where the potential rewards of successful litigation may colour the clinical picture. Methods This paper is essentially a selective review which attempts to appraise and assemble some of the facts and fallacies available and includes a series of 100 consecutive medico-legal cases (results marked in parentheses). Definition No acceptable definition exists, but few would dissent from the open-ended one: "a collection of symptoms following injury to the neck, usually hyperextension-flexion, often the result of a car

The child prodigy Marie-Jean-Pierre Flourens received his medical degree at Montpellier when aged 19. As a young promising physician Flourens was asked to investigate Gall’s controversial views on cerebral localization. To test Gall’s assertions, Flourens developed ablation as a procedure to explore the workings of the brain. By removing anatomically defined areas of the brain of an animal and watching its behaviour, he thought he might localize certain functions. Flourens did not favour the idea of cerebral localization and concluded that the brain functioned as a whole and thus arose the concept of ‘cerebral equipotentiality’. This culminated in his 1824 Recherches expérimentales sur les propriétés et les fonctions du système nerveux. His techniques were, however, crude and imperfect, and his experiments were mainly on birds. Much criticism and debate ensued. A gifted man, Flourens also advanced the physiology of the vestibular apparatus and described the anaesthetic properties of ether.