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[(Multiple Sclerosis: The History of a Disease)] [Author: T. Murray] published on
In this elegantly written and comprehensive history, we meet individuals who suffered with multiple sclerosis in the centuries before the disease had a name, including blessed Lidwina of Holland, who took joy from her misery, believing that she was sent to accept suffering for the sins of others; Augustus, grandson of George III and cousin of Queen Victoria, whose case shows how someone with access to the best of medical care of the age was understood and managed; and Heinrich Heine, the great German poet, who also had access to all medical services that were available, but who progressed into his mattress grave in two decades, aware of the loss of physical ability while still able to compose great poetry to the end. From these early cases the author demonstrates how progress in diagnosing and managing multiple sclerosis has paralleled the development of medical science, from the early developments in modern studies of anatomy and pathology, to the framing of the disease in the nineteenth century, and eventually to modern diagnosis and treatment.
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First published December 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 22, 2015
My main thought, as I went through this book, was, Who is the Audience?
My next thought was, That really shouldn't matter. Everything doesn't have to be a brand. Everything doesn't have to be written with an audience in mind. There are books written from obsessions--and this is one of them. It reminds me, in that sense, of many other histories of science written int he nineteenth and mid-twentieth century by practitioners or former practitioners, who are interested in the past of their subject, but not in history per se.
So, this is not a book for historians--except as a pointer to sources--but for MS doctors. If you go into it with that expectation, you'll do fine.
Murray does do something of a fake out early on, citing the eminent historian of medicine Charles Rosenberg, and making reference to this "Framing Disease" approach to the history of medicine, But he uses this theoretical scaffolding in very limited ways. Primarily, this is an intellectual history of the understanding of MS, with the standard Whiggish assumptions, and occasional flashes of something more interesting.
Murray wants to argue that M.S. is something that has been with humanity for a long time, but was only properly recognized in the 19th century. In this, he is clearly arguing against those who suggest it is a recent disease, or a disease of civilization. His evidence for this claim, though, never really adds up, and so his review of pre-19th century material is interesting enough--in terms of looking back on how people experienced medical suffering in other eras--but does nothing to prove that what they experienced was what we know of as M.S.
He then moves into early 19th century descriptions of the disease--his point here being that Charcot, who is generally credited with discovering MS, built on previous work. That's true enough, and Murray does yeoman work in ferreting out old reports and detailing exact dates and what-not. But in the end he just verifies the importance of Charcot: sure he built on others, but he clarified the disease and set the standard for the next, like, sixty years.
Charcot's ideas became dominant, in part, because medical education in the nineteenth century often flowed through Paris, where clinical correlations with pathological studies were being made--this is one instant where Murray moves beyond the individual to look at some larger social structures. But even so, he never follows Rosenberg in noting that diseases are not just institutionally defined, but each generation does so in a slightly different way. For him, the generations show refinement--or stagnation--but not other kinds of change.
After Charcot, there continued to be work on MS, with a whole host of treatments, but most doctors, even as they treated the patients, acknowledged that there were no good therapeutics. A lot of this work seems to have been done in England and Canada, which seems to be a sub-rosa argument Murray is making: the importance of English neurology and Canadian clinical work. He's a Canadian, so there may be some chauvinism there, I don't know.
There were changes in the understanding of MS in the years after World War II, as it came to be attached to immunology especially, in addition to neurology. Still, a lot of the middle part of the book is a muddle--a series of annotated lists of various people who did various kinds of work on MS without trying to summarize anything. I could never tell if there was an actual community of MS researchers, or just various people who worked on the disease from various directions and had different ideas about the disorder.
As anyone familiar with the disorder can say now, the 1980s witnessed a dramatic change in the intellectual understanding of MS., first because of the invention of MRIs, which allowed for the visualization of the brain and spine lesions, and then, in the 1990s, with therapies that proved somewhat effective.
The book really misses out on the other aspects of Rosenberg's "Framing Disease" theoretical model, which could have made it more interesting--and that relates to the sense of community. He mentions that MS Societies in the 1950s and 1960s, started by a woman concerned about her brother, but only sketches out something of that community in the final chapter--at the same time mentioning that patients often turned to alternative medicines because of the lack of therapeutics. There's also an earlier chapter on a diary written by a man with MS that is enlightening.
I think of Steve Epstein's amazing history of AIDs, which is structured similarly--the history of a recent disease--but takes seriously the framing model to look at the way individual sufferers effected understanding of the disease, including scientific research and government research. I don't know--though I doubt--that the MS community was ever as activist or confrontational as the gay and AIDS-communities, but there's a story to be told there, as well as the institutional role of pharmaceutical companies, as creatures that define disease, not just provide helpful therapeutics. A story about those interacting factors--sufferers, clinicians, researchers, policy makers, pharmaceutical companies--that is the story Murray promised but does not deliver.
This is just intellectual history. It is written in an academic style that makes me think of pieces in medical journals that are trying to reach out to the humanities but cannot escape their own language. It is also true that Murray does not bother to translate many medical terms
My next thought was, That really shouldn't matter. Everything doesn't have to be a brand. Everything doesn't have to be written with an audience in mind. There are books written from obsessions--and this is one of them. It reminds me, in that sense, of many other histories of science written int he nineteenth and mid-twentieth century by practitioners or former practitioners, who are interested in the past of their subject, but not in history per se.
So, this is not a book for historians--except as a pointer to sources--but for MS doctors. If you go into it with that expectation, you'll do fine.
Murray does do something of a fake out early on, citing the eminent historian of medicine Charles Rosenberg, and making reference to this "Framing Disease" approach to the history of medicine, But he uses this theoretical scaffolding in very limited ways. Primarily, this is an intellectual history of the understanding of MS, with the standard Whiggish assumptions, and occasional flashes of something more interesting.
Murray wants to argue that M.S. is something that has been with humanity for a long time, but was only properly recognized in the 19th century. In this, he is clearly arguing against those who suggest it is a recent disease, or a disease of civilization. His evidence for this claim, though, never really adds up, and so his review of pre-19th century material is interesting enough--in terms of looking back on how people experienced medical suffering in other eras--but does nothing to prove that what they experienced was what we know of as M.S.
He then moves into early 19th century descriptions of the disease--his point here being that Charcot, who is generally credited with discovering MS, built on previous work. That's true enough, and Murray does yeoman work in ferreting out old reports and detailing exact dates and what-not. But in the end he just verifies the importance of Charcot: sure he built on others, but he clarified the disease and set the standard for the next, like, sixty years.
Charcot's ideas became dominant, in part, because medical education in the nineteenth century often flowed through Paris, where clinical correlations with pathological studies were being made--this is one instant where Murray moves beyond the individual to look at some larger social structures. But even so, he never follows Rosenberg in noting that diseases are not just institutionally defined, but each generation does so in a slightly different way. For him, the generations show refinement--or stagnation--but not other kinds of change.
After Charcot, there continued to be work on MS, with a whole host of treatments, but most doctors, even as they treated the patients, acknowledged that there were no good therapeutics. A lot of this work seems to have been done in England and Canada, which seems to be a sub-rosa argument Murray is making: the importance of English neurology and Canadian clinical work. He's a Canadian, so there may be some chauvinism there, I don't know.
There were changes in the understanding of MS in the years after World War II, as it came to be attached to immunology especially, in addition to neurology. Still, a lot of the middle part of the book is a muddle--a series of annotated lists of various people who did various kinds of work on MS without trying to summarize anything. I could never tell if there was an actual community of MS researchers, or just various people who worked on the disease from various directions and had different ideas about the disorder.
As anyone familiar with the disorder can say now, the 1980s witnessed a dramatic change in the intellectual understanding of MS., first because of the invention of MRIs, which allowed for the visualization of the brain and spine lesions, and then, in the 1990s, with therapies that proved somewhat effective.
The book really misses out on the other aspects of Rosenberg's "Framing Disease" theoretical model, which could have made it more interesting--and that relates to the sense of community. He mentions that MS Societies in the 1950s and 1960s, started by a woman concerned about her brother, but only sketches out something of that community in the final chapter--at the same time mentioning that patients often turned to alternative medicines because of the lack of therapeutics. There's also an earlier chapter on a diary written by a man with MS that is enlightening.
I think of Steve Epstein's amazing history of AIDs, which is structured similarly--the history of a recent disease--but takes seriously the framing model to look at the way individual sufferers effected understanding of the disease, including scientific research and government research. I don't know--though I doubt--that the MS community was ever as activist or confrontational as the gay and AIDS-communities, but there's a story to be told there, as well as the institutional role of pharmaceutical companies, as creatures that define disease, not just provide helpful therapeutics. A story about those interacting factors--sufferers, clinicians, researchers, policy makers, pharmaceutical companies--that is the story Murray promised but does not deliver.
This is just intellectual history. It is written in an academic style that makes me think of pieces in medical journals that are trying to reach out to the humanities but cannot escape their own language. It is also true that Murray does not bother to translate many medical terms
April 8, 2024
Sending you prayers, I was diagnosed in 2010 and seemed to go down hill quickly. In six years I could no longer work and had real problems with balance and joint pain. Brain fog was really bad sometimes. I took rebif and had a lot of problems and had to quit. I have been on techfadera (not spelled right) for a few years and have several side effects. I felt lost and decided to quit my meds due to side effects. Our care provider introduced me to Ayurvedic treatment. I had a total decline of all symptoms including vision problems, numbness and others. Sometimes, i totally forget i ever had MS. Visit Natural Herbs Centre web-site natural herbs centre. com. I am very pleased with this treatment. I eat well, sleep well and exercise regularly. God bless all MS Sending you prayers, I was diagnosed in 2010 and seemed to go down hill quickly. In six years I could no longer work and had real problems with balance and joint pain. Brain fog was really bad sometimes. I took rebif and had a lot of problems and had to quit. I have been on techfadera (not spelled right) for a few years and have several side effects. I felt lost and decided to quit my meds due to side effects. Our care provider introduced me to Ayurvedic treatment. I had a total decline of all symptoms including vision problems, numbness and others. Sometimes, i totally forget i ever had MS. Visit Natural Herbs Centre web-site natural herbs centre. com. I am very pleased with this treatment. I eat well, sleep well and exercise regularly. God bless all MS Warriors
July 6, 2022
This was an excellent read and it does exactly what it states on the cover. It provides a fully comprehensive look at multiple sclerosis, from the first reported cases in the 14th century through to the late 20th. Although it contains a lot of medical jargon - naturally - I found it easily readable as a layman, and laid out in such a way to improve the ease of the reading. All very good, in others.
January 30, 2022
As an European 4th year medical student I could easily follow the contents of Murray’s book, but I can see it being overwhelming for the lay person not familiar with the neurological terminology.
However, the contents are a superb educational tour through the developing knowledge of the bizarre disease that is Multiple Sclerosis.
However, the contents are a superb educational tour through the developing knowledge of the bizarre disease that is Multiple Sclerosis.
May 9, 2015
My neurologist suggested I read this book. I am disinclined to be fascinated by symptoms as much as published research about the brain and advances in finding the cause and cure for MS. The history of the disease dates back to the 1300s making it impossible to blame on current conditions of the environment. I hope this book is updated soon with information about how scientists cured the illness.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews