implicated as the locus of destruction in PD. Never before had an animal
model been discovered that mimicked PD, and researchers around the
country pounced on MPTP as an agent they could use to artificially create
PD in lab animals. It would later be discovered that MPTP was broken
down into another, more toxic, molecule (MPP+) that was aggressively
taken up in the cells that use dopamine as their primary
“neurotransmitter”—in essence sending little chemical “smart bombs”
into the depths of the brain where movement is coordinated.
Giovanni Morgagni’s breakthrough observation about the seats and
causes of disease had changed physicians’ understanding of the role of
individual organs in disease. The component parts of the brain were not
understood by scientists into the 19th century, but a curiosity was building
about the role of the shape and size of the skull in determining a subject’s
personality and functional ability. German physicians developed
phrenology as a pseudo-science, believing that bony prominences and
unique head contours could give an alert examiner a leg up on diagnosing
psychological issues. Like most forms of quackery (even today), there was
no disproving that phrenology was false, but it did open the door to
considering that different parts of the brain had singular functions.
Phineas Gage was a Vermont railroad worker who suffered a macabre
injury to his head when a railroad tamping iron was blasted out of a hole
beneath him, rocketing through his head and landing some eighty feet
away. This was 1848, with little medical care to speak of, and death a
certainty. But somehow, he lived. The local doctor, for his day, was well
trained and understood the value of wound debridement and gentle care of
the tissues near the blast injury site.
The trajectory of the javelin-sized tamping iron had started below his
left eye and continued out the top of his head. Amazingly, Phineas was
initially conversant, but within days, became semi-comatose and hovered
at the brink of death. The local physician performed removal of clot and
abscess. Nearly a century before the advent of antibiotics, Gage would live
or die based solely upon the power of his own immune system. He lived,
losing the function of his left eye, but more important, losing his old
personality and temperament.
Phineas Gage lived another decade, but was transformed from a man of
mild disposition and normal social interactions to a desperate patient who
indulged in the “greatest profanity (which was not previously his custom),
marcin
(Marcin)
#1