Introduction

Neurophobia—the fear of neurology1—is well described in medical students and is postulated as the reason for an apparent bias favouring neurology in case studies. Neurological cases represent more than a quarter of all Lancet case reports: 29% of 523 cases during 1996-20022 and 26% of 360 cases during 2003-8.3 Coles et al attributed this to “the trepidation and interest that neurological syndromes generate among physicians.”2 They considered this stigmatisation of a core medical specialty to represent our continued inability to demystify the subject.

However, the literature does not tell us whether neurological cases are genuinely over-represented or merely appropriately common. We set out to determine this by comparing the pattern of cases from a UK publisher (BMJ Case Reports) with the UK burden of disability. We also hypothesise that a more eloquent explanation for …