鈥� In 1907, Rezs枚 B谩lint (1874-1929), a young Hungarian physician, recorded observations he had made on a patient who suffered from a remarkable constellation of symptoms鈥攆ixation of gaze, neglect of objects in the visual surround, and misreaching鈥攆ollowing damage to the posterior parietal lobes. Although B谩lint's syndrome, the name now given to these disorders of attention and visuomotor control, is well established in the neurologic literature, there remain problems of interpretation. B谩lint's own attempts to understand exactly what was wrong with his patient offer a unique insight into the nature of neurologic thought at the beginning of this century.