History of MS
MS has been around for hundreds of years - long before it was ever called MS. It's difficult to determine whether the disease has increased over the centuries because of a natural progression, or whether it's simply because of the increase in overall world population.
One of the first suggested cases of MS goes back to around 1400, when a teenaged Dutch girl named Lidwina van Schiedam, fell while ice skating. Complications arising after the fall led to a diagnosis that "her disease was incurable as it came directly from God, and that any attempt to cure her would impoverish her father and do no good…"
After seven-to-eight years of experiencing difficulty with walking, and paralysis in her right arm, she began having visions of God and angels. Though her disease continued to worsen, her supernatural experiences continued, as she "saw purgatory and heaven, and visited with saints." Lidwina died in 1433, after which a chapel was built over her grave. A cult-like following developed after her death and she was eventually canonized.
Strange Cures
There aren't a lot of records concerning suspected cases of MS until the early to mid 1800s. But some of the therapies prescribed between those times are interesting, if not downright frightening! Some of these include:
- Bathing in and drinking "steel-water"
- Spas
- Eating beef steaks twice a day
- Drinking sherry and wine
- Massages with camphorated alcohol, opium and oil
- Sulfate of zinc baths
- Sea baths
- Horseback riding
- Spanish fly
- Strychnine
- Quinine
- Silver nitrite
- Mercury
A turning point in the knowledge of MS came in 1868 when a French neurologist named Jean-Martin Charcot wrote a complete medical description of the disease and the changes in the brain that occur along with it.
Charcot was born in 1825. His early research and writings concerned various forms of arthritis. He is credited with bringing attention to the relationship of clinical science and pathologic correlation. Charcot established that MS had distinct features that differentiated it from Parkinson's disease. Charcot and a colleague showed that, by using a carmine stain, the protective myelin coating of a nerve cell was damaged, but the axon itself was intact.
By his mid forties, he pulled together the experiences of his patients and the patterns described by clinicians into a clinical concept. He named this "disease" sclerose en plaque (disseminated sclerosis) which would later be called multiple sclerosis in the English language. Although others before him had recognized and described many of the symptoms and signs of the disease, Charcot's great contribution was putting everything into focus so that doctors and clinicians from time forward would more clearly recognize what they were looking at and build on his understanding.
It was Charcot's ability to combine clinical science and pathology that added to a clearer understanding of several diseases, including multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis - ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's disease), hyperthyroidism (overactive thyroid gland), diabetic gangrene and diseases common in the elderly.
Jean-Martin Charcot is remembered as a pioneer in several areas, but his research in recognizing, differentiating and naming multiple sclerosis is what he's remembered for the most.
Much research by many scientists and physicians has been conducted since the time Charcot established his theories. Several individuals came up with theories, some of which now seem ludicrous, but along the way, more credit was given to Charcot, mainly, establishing that presence of plaques of a nerve cell is a major contributor to the symptoms that are often seen prior to a diagnosis of MS.