Awakenings and Tourette
Awakenings and TouretteIn the 1920's, Leonard Lowe is a normal ten year old boy who is attacked by a mysteriously crippling disease. The onset of the disease manifests itself in periods of what I can only term �suspended animation.� At one moment, the victim is engaging in a normal activity, and at another he appears to be a living statue. Early in the disease, these periods of suspension last anywhere from a few moments to a few hours, and eventually, the victim is trapped seemingly forever in the statue phase. Only certain specific outside stimuli obtains a physical reaction, such as catching a ball or walking.
When the movie begins, they show Leonard to us as a normal and seemingly healthy ten year old boy who is afflicted with the "sleeping sickness" disease that reached epidemic proportions during that specific era. Like many others who contracted this illness, Leonard and those like him were often misdiagnosed and eventually placed in mental hospital facilities because of their apparent vegetative state. Doctors who worked on the earlier cases believed the patients mental faculties to have been destroyed by the illness.
Dr. Sayer (Dr. Oliver Sacks in real life) discovers that certain vegetative patients reacted to outside stimuli, such as a pattern on a floor, a tossed ball, or a television with a maladjusted vertical hold. Finally, Dr. Sayer comes across Leonard as a middle-aged man, some thirty years after he was originally afflicted with the disease. After doing some tests, the doctor comes to realize that there is brain activity and convinces his colleagues that further tests should be considered. He theorizes that a newly developed drug, L-Dopa, developed for the treatment of Parkinson's patients may benefit these patients. He doses Leonard, with no initial success. Once again he theorizes that the acid in the Orange Juice, which he had been giving with the medicine may actually be neutralizing the effects of the drug. He tries once more with milk, and obtains some rather startling results. The drug has not only succeeded in obtaining a reaction from the patient, but seemingly it has brought him completely out of his "comatose" condition. The doctor discovers him in the patient's lounge area coloring in a coloring book. Unfortunately for Leonard, he is completely unaware that he is no longer ten years old.
What Dr. Sacks discovered is what we today call Tourette's Syndrome. Tourette's Syndrome is an inherited, neurological disorder characterized by repeated and involuntary body movements (tics) and uncontrollable vocal sounds. In a small amount of cases, the vocalizations can include socially inappropriate words and phrases -- called coprolalia.
These outbursts are neither intentional nor purposeful. Involuntary symptoms can included eye blinking, repeated throat clearing or sniffing, arm thrusting, kicking movements, shoulder shrugging or jumping.
These and other symptoms typically appear before the age of 18 and the condition occurs in all ethnic groups with males affected 3 to 4 times more often than females....
To view the complete essay, you be registered.