[The Bernardino Álvarez Farm Hospital and Farm School: antecedents to Instituto Nacional de Neurología y Neurocirugía].

By 1960, México's Manicomio General (General Asylum) could no longer fulfill the functions for which it was created so implementation of the so-called Castañeda Operation began, an initiative designed to close down and relocate psychiatric patients to other institutions. At that time, Dr. Manuel Velasco-Suárez was in charge of the General Direction of Neurology, Mental Health and Rehabilitation, and planned to create the Institute of Neurology on a site he already possessed for its construction. The Asylum was a dependency of the aforementioned Direction and Velasco- Suárez decided that some patients at the Castañeda could be moved to the old hacienda house that stood on that terrain. Thus was born the Bernardino Álvarez Farm Hospital. A year later, in 1961, the Farm School for the Weak-Minded, also named Bernardino Álvarez was established there as well. This paper examines the history of these two institutions as antecedents to the Instituto Nacional de Neurología y Neurocirugía.