China
Africa
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
A Brief History of Nutritional Medicine and the Emergence of Nutrition as a Medical Subspecialty
Published in Michael M. Rothkopf, Jennifer C. Johnson, Optimizing Metabolic Status for the Hospitalized Patient, 2023
Michael M. Rothkopf, Jennifer C. Johnson
While Takaki struggled with beriberi in Japan, half a world away Karl Wernicke (in 1881) observed an unusual triad of confusion, ataxia and ophthalmoplegia in three patients with severe, persistent vomiting. On autopsy, he found punctate hemorrhages of the gray matter around the third/fourth ventricles and aqueduct. He called this condition hemorrhagic polioencephalitis. But the moniker of Wernicke’s encephalopathy (WE) has remained in use to this day. It is still seen in alcoholics and in those who have suffered from persistent vomiting for several days (i.e., after bariatric surgery).
Neuroinfectious Diseases
Published in Philip B. Gorelick, Fernando D. Testai, Graeme J. Hankey, Joanna M. Wardlaw, Hankey's Clinical Neurology, 2020
Jeremy D. Young, Jesica A. Herrick, Scott Borgetti
Frank encephalitis from poliovirus is relatively rare, but occasionally occurs in infancy. It is clinically indistinguishable from other forms of viral encephalitis, presenting with signs and symptoms such as agitation, confusion, disturbances of consciousness, stupor, coma, and seizures. A very high index of suspicion is required to make the diagnosis. Polioencephalitis carries a high risk of infant mortality.
Von Economo’s encephalitis
Published in Avindra Nath, Joseph R. Berger, Clinical Neurovirology, 2020
The illness referred to as von Economo’s encephalitis has been described by a large number of other names, including, “epidemic encephalitis,” “lethargic encephalitis,” “encephalitis lethargica,” “sleeping sickness,” “sleepy sickness”, “Schlafkrankheit,” “Schlummerkrankheit,” “Von Economo’s disease” or, simply, “Economo’s disease.” Some named it on the basis of the region of brain chiefly involved. For instance, Kinnier Wilson referred to it as “mesencephalitis” and Bernard Sachs as a “basilar encephalitis” [1]. This illness spread in epidemic fashion throughout Europe beginning in the winter of 1916–1917. In addition to its epidemic nature, this polioencephalitis of the brainstem exhibited a polymorphic clinical expression with some variability from place to place and from epidemic to epidemic, each individual case had an irregular and indeterminate course, and usually resulted in lingering and permanent sequelae. There is nothing in the history of medicine to compare with the phantasmagoria of disorder manifested in the course of this strange malady…Into the maze of contradictory phenomena it seemed almost impossible to read anything like a rationalized order of events which might be termed a disease entity. [2]
René Cruchet (1875–1959), beyond encephalitis lethargica
Published in Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 2022
On April 17, 1917, von Economo first described the disseminated centers of “polioencephalitis,” which were nonhemorrhagic, nonnecrotic, and localized in mesencephalic gray matter (Figure 6). A few weeks later, von Economo and Richard Wiesner (1875–1954) tried to demonstrate transmission in monkeys, hoping to confirm the infectious nature of the condition they had described, but the monkey did not develop a relevant disease. This point is still debated today (Foley 2009).
Adolf Kussmaul (1822–1902), and the naming of “poliomyelitis”
Published in Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 2022
Nadeem Toodayan, Eric Matteson
But Kussmaul’s preferred terminology would prevail in the end. Gowers himself adopted the term “polio-myelitis” in the section on “inflammation of the spinal cord” in Volume 1 of his widely acclaimed Manual of Diseases of the Nervous System (Gowers 1886, 212–13, 251–52)—the so-called Bible of English neurology (Critchley 1949, 47)—and other leading English and American authors collectively followed suit (Fagge and Pye Smith 1886, 497; Osler 1889, 1, 1892, 831). The term was so favored by German neuropathologist Carl Wernicke (1848–1905) that he adopted the prefix polio when describing pathological cortical changes in what he originally called “hämorrhagische Polioencephalitis superior” (Wernicke 1881, 229–42), a condition now known only as “Wernicke’s encephalopathy”—although veterinary pathologists continue to use the term “polioencephalomalacia” to describe a not altogether dissimilar condition in thiamine deficient ruminants (Adams, Griner, and Jensen 1956).10The term “polioencephalomalacia” was first used by veterinarians in 1956 (Adams, Griner, and Jensen 1956) and is still recognized today as a cause for cerebrocortical necrosis in thiamine deficient ruminant mammals (Personal correspondence with Dr. M. W. Shinwari, veterinary pathologist, Biosecurity Sciences Laboratory, Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry; Queensland Government, Brisbane, Australia). Wernicke specifically noted in his original 1881 monograph that “Kussmaul first used the name poliomyelitis, and this was soon generally accepted” (Wernicke 1881, 230).11“The forms of disease summarized under the name of poliomyelitis are known to be more of a clinical term than the result of pathological anatomical observations, and the acute form of the same was known clinically under the name of infantile spinal paralysis long before it was known that disease of the gray matter was involved. When it was later possible to determine the pathological-anatomical substrate of this disease by means of autopsy findings, a corresponding naming was deemed necessary and Kussmaul then first used the name poliomyelitis, and this was soon generally accepted” (Wernicke 1881, 230).