Historical sketches of the beginnings of the academic "Mental and Nervous Diseases" in Brazil, and European influences.

We present the common milestones of the neurology and psychiatry in Brazil, but, previously, they were summarized in the European matrix. The main psychiatric and neurological historical interceptions may be recognized by the terms neurology, psychiatry, alienism, neurosis and insanity; its organogenesis or socio- and psychogenetic basis; and its proximity or distance from internal medicine.