Throughout the years, researchers and scientists have learned more and more about Multiple Sclerosis. While sightings of MS symptoms date back to 1838, progress in MS research only occurred at more recent times.
Augustus d’Este, a grandson of King George III, is the first person believed to have MS. d’Este was born in 1794 and kept a diary that detailed his symptoms for his illness, which was unknown back then. He talks about his inability to focus his vision, the floating spots he saw, along with symptoms, such as numbness and issues with mobility. d’Este died in 1848, but it took almost 20 years after his death for him to be officially diagnosed with MS based on what he wrote in his diary.
In 1838, autopsy reports were the first official sighting of MS. These autopsy reports revealed plaques, which were areas of scar tissue, in bodies of the deceased. Jean-Martin Charcot had officially named MS as Multiple Sclerosis in 1868. Charcot was a neurologist who had studied d’Este’s diary and also studied a woman with symptoms of MS. After the women died, Charcot saw MS lesions in her brain. He had started to give lectures on the symptoms of MS, and it was during these lectures that he officially gave it the name Multiple Sclerosis.
Throughout the 19th and 20th century, many different types of treatments were experimented with to cope with MS, though none were successful. These treatments included nightshade, arsenic, mercury and even malaria parasites. These treatments were mostly harmful and dangerous to patients, and real progress on the treatments for MS and MS research was not made till the 1930s.
In the 1870s, MS was officially recognized as a disease by Dr. Edward Seguin. It was later, in the 1930s, when real progress was made on MS research. New advancements in science, such as being able to view cells under a microscope, helped lead to this advancement. Dr. James Dawson first studied brain matter under a microscope, and saw the damage to the myelin sheath that is caused by MS. Dr. Thomas Rivers, another scientist, had made the discovery that MS was a disease related to nerve tissue, not a virus. It was discovered in the 1960s that the role of the immune system in MS was to attack the myelin sheath.
During the 1940s, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society was founded. This society supported MS research and still supports it to this day. MRIs were first used to detect MS in 1981, and it continues to be one of the main ways to see if a person has MS.
Research in MS has come a long way since the first seen symptoms, and there is still a long way to go. Not only has the treatments gotten exponentially better, but our knowledge on the causes and symptoms of MS have also improved.
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