Intersting article from 1918

[peglem]

Sorry, forgot to give the link to the Wikipedia article-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Cotton_%28doctor%29

 

Doesn't anybody else see Dr. Cotton as a butcher who just kept removing a patient's body parts until they either died or faked a cure so he wouldn't cut on them anymore? Too bad they dropped the idea of infectious etiology, before they had a better method of dealing with infection....but, sheesh! This seriously disturbed me!

[Tenacity]

A relevant snippet from an earlier exchange on this forum -- copied and pasted:

 

smartyjones

Sep 28 2009, 06:25 PM Post #3

 

 

I have a story to relate but please excuse that I heard it a while ago and won't get it right but can convey the jist. My ped told me this in the spring - he told it as an example that he didn't think my 5 year old had strep lurking in his body b/c we'd treated strongly with abx and he hasn't had invasive treatments to breed strep - but the story is quite interesting.

 

He saw a college age girl (I don't think she had previously been his patient) that had previously been beautiful, motivated, healthy. She'd started having trouble in school, academically, socially, feeling badly, losing motivation, looking bad. She eventually dropped out of college. Her parents were wealthy and had taken her to many doctors who couldn't figure out what was wrong. When he saw her, he ran strep titers. They were high. From there, they figured out that when she had previously had some dental work, some thing had been done incompletely or improperly and she had a strep infection in her gums. They corrected the dental issue, treated the strep and she was back to her previous self.

 

Not sure if that helps you but I think it's an interesting story.

[Kay]

Worried Dad, who is the author of that book? I think I listened to her on a public radio show from Chicago back a few months ago and someone had called in about Pandas, she said she had not studied Pandas but had been in contact with people who had and said there were some similarities. It was very interesting.

 

 

Wow - fascinating! This is at about the same time (1918) that the encephalitis lethargica epidemic erupted around the globe, especially in NY area. I'm reading the book Asleep about this "forgotten" epidemic - only partway through it. But it's amazing: this was at a time when neurology and psychiatry were still combined into one discipline ("neuropsychiatry"). The experts back then did not doubt for a moment that this outbreak of severe, PANDAS-like illness was a direct result of an infection that caused inflammation and damage to the basal ganglia, that the physical and mental symptoms were inextricably intertwined.

 

My, how far we've come with all this specialization in the past century... sigh.

[thereishope]

OMG! That is disturbing. it sounds like he had some OCD himself and he became obsessed with "curing" people at all costs. Thank goodness for antibiotics.

 

 

Sorry, forgot to give the link to the Wikipedia article-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Cotton_%28doctor%29

 

Doesn't anybody else see Dr. Cotton as a butcher who just kept removing a patient's body parts until they either died or faked a cure so he wouldn't cut on them anymore? Too bad they dropped the idea of infectious etiology, before they had a better method of dealing with infection....but, sheesh! This seriously disturbed me!

[coco]

My hubby loves to collect history books, old and new, and Vickie's post prompted me to pull this oldie off the shelf. I never paid much attention to it before. It is called Disease - The Extraordinary Stories Behind History's Deadliest Killers. I pulled it out and thumbed through the index under Strep and found "Encephalitis Lethargica". Here is an excerpt:

 

The Baffling Nature of Encephalitis Lethargica

 

In the period of 1916-27 anywhere between 1 and 5 million people of all ages but especially young adults, were affected by encephalitis lethargica. Possibly as many as one-third died quickly after the acute phase, either a "deep sleep" or in a state of insomnia. Those who survived displayed a baffling range of peculiar symptoms - sore throats, headache, fever followed by severe lethargy, tremors, hiccoughs, tics, twitching and disturbances of eye movements including oculorgic crises, in which the eyeballs are fixed for a period of time. Some of those who were afflicted by the complaint recovered after a few days or weeks, but many others became lethargic and unresponsive and unable to intereact with or share in the world around them.

 

Many long term survivors were affected, some time after the orginal infection, by a condition known as post-encephalitic parkinsonism, similiar in presentation but unrelated to Parkinson's disease. Many experienced severe neurological problems, psychotic episodes and behavioral disturbances, and some were confined to institutions, where they existed like living statues, unaware of their surroundings or the passage of years.

 

There are still a few sporadic cases of encephalitis lethargica, possibly following a bacterial infection, but why it hit the world with such force in the early 20th century remains a puzzle.[/i]

 

I'll tell you why! Because there was no Pandas forum, that's why! Almost LOL!

 

a bit more,

 

Some scientists have re-examined the evidence and have suggested that encephalitis lethargica is a bacterial disease rather than a viral disease, in which the body's immune system reacts violently to an infection (possibly streptococcal) by attacking the nerve cells of the brain.....Today there are still occasional cases in young people of what appears to be encephalitis lethargica, so understanding the causes of this disease and finding effective treatment are still critical - especially as it is impossible to say if or when some time in the future there will be another sudden violent eruption of this mysterioius disease.

 

And Finally...

 

THE DANCING MANIA

 

There have been a number of neurological conditions in the past as mysterious as encephalitis lethargica. Some began with manic dancing, followed by stupor, death or permanent tremors in the survivors.

 

In the 1370s in the Rhine basin of Germany and the Low Countries, there was an epidemic of what was known as St Vitus dance. It involved groups of people joining hands and dancing wildly for hours in a delirium, until they fell exhausted to the ground.

 

In the 17th century Thomas Sydenham 1624-89 applied the name St Vitus dance to what is now known as Syndenham's Chorea. This is characterized by rapid uncoordinated jerking movements, motor weakness and behaviorial disorders, possibly occurring as latent effect of streptoccocal infection following rheumatic fever.

 

That probably more than you wanted to know (and many are already familiar), but once I got started it grabbed my interest. It is so shocking that this has been around for hundreds of years and yet some dopey physicians are still scratching their heads today. History repeats itself!!