James Ramsay Hunt

James Ramsay Hunt (1872 in Philadelphia – July 22, 1937 in Katonah, New York) was an American neurologist.

He graduated M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1893. He then studied in Paris, Vienna, and Berlin and returned to practise neurology in New York, working at Cornell University Medical School from 1900 - 1910 with Charles Loomis Dana. He did major research on the anatomy and disorders of the corpus striatum and the extrapyramidal system. He was consulting physician at several New York hospitals and was appointed professor of neurology at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, in 1924.

During World War I, he was a Lieutenant and later a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Medical Corps, serving in France as director of neuropsychiatry.

Hunt described three discrete syndromes, the best known of which is herpes zoster oticus, also known as Ramsay Hunt syndrome type 2.

Hunt married Chicagoan Alice St. John Nolan, by whom he had James Ramsay Hunt Jr. and Alice St. John Hunt.

Other associated eponyms

• Ramsay Hunt's atrophy: A term for wasting of the small muscles of the hands without sensory loss.
• Ramsay Hunt's zone: A delimitated skin area supplied by the Ganglion geniculi of the Nervus intermedius.
• Ramsay Hunt's paralysis: A disturbance with symptoms resembling those of parkinsonism, but less intense than in Parkinson's disease.

See also

• Ramsay Hunt syndromes

References

• Haruda F. James Ramsay Hunt (1872-1937). In: Haymaker W, ed. The founders of neurology. Springfield, IL: Thomas, 1953;302-305.