WECHSLER, ISRAEL

WECHSLER, ISRAEL (Spanier; 1886–1962), U.S. neurologist, born in Lespedi, Romania. He was taken to the U.S. at an early age and educated in New York. He taught at Columbia University (professor of clinical neurology, 1931) and served as consulting neurologist at various New York hospitals. He was president of the American Neurological Association (1958). He was a member of the Board of Governors of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1930 and president of the American Friends of The Hebrew University. Wechsler made special studies on various aspects of epilepsy. He recommended the use of ephedrine in the treatment of autonomic epilepsy and paraldehyde intravenously for status epilepticus. He also did research on Vitamin E in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. He is the author of Textbook of Clinical Neurology (1927, 19588) and The Neurologist's Point of View: Essays on Psychiatric and Other Subjects (1945). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: S.R. Kagan, Jewish Medicine (1952), 405–6; Baron, in: JSOS, 25 (1963), 100–1. (Suessmann Muntner)