SCIENTIST'S HEROISM

Shannon News, 1 May 1928, Page 4

SCIENTIST'S HEROISM

SACRIFICE TOR RESEARCH..

MARTYR TO NERVE DISEASE.

world-famous British neurologist who is one of the most heroic martyrs to medical research, is now the helpless victim of a mysterious and insidious disease on which he is possibly the greatest living authority. Ho is Sir Herry Head, who has made some of the most important contributions of modern. times to the knowledge .of nervous disorders, and is also celebrated in medical history as the voluntary • subject of one of the most fearsome experiments that has ever been made in the cause of scientific progress. Th« incurable disease from which he is suffering —a form of creeping i y paralysis—is one of which he has made a life study. Sir Henry retired from practice and threw up his many distinguished appointments about eighteen months ago, when the first symptoms of the disease appeared, and ho has lived since at Forston House, his country borne, aboirt five miles from Dorchester.

A nurte is in constant attendance, and a young spesialist, who is one of Sir Henry's old pupils, frequently comes down from London to consult with the patient on the treatment of tho disease.

Sir Henry is able to walk, although with some, difficulty, and he often goes for long drives through 4 the country, but he has lost the ,use of his fingers, and cannot write. Medical men from all parts of the world still correspond with him on abstruse problems of neurology, and Sir Henry dictates his replies to Mb wife.

Nearly twenty years ago Sir Henry deliberately risked contracting paralysis by a dangerous experiment he undertook in the cause of medical research.

He has the nerves of his left arm severed near the elbow, for the purpose of studying, by personal experience, the problem of "deep sensibility."

Dr. Head prepared himself specially for the sacrifice. He neither smoked nor drank alcoholic liquors, and lived a life of rigorous self/denial. His feilow-practitioners declare that the action of Dr. Head was worthy to rank with the- noblest ever recorded in the annate of science.

When the sacrifice was made, leading nerve specialists in the country watched the case, and were able to acquire new knowledge of the way in. which messages are conveyed by the nerves to the brain. Accidents in which these nerves have been severed have, moreover, since received more effective treatment than ever before in the history of surgery.

The disease which is now afflicting Sir Henry Head, is a rare disorder known as Parkiuson 's disease. It was discovered one hundred years ago, and can be caused by adhesion of the nerves, but Lady. Head will not believe that her husband's illness is attributed to his experiment. "His arm healed up perfectly," she said. "I think the disease must have been brought on by overwork. "It is incurable, but it does not attack life. My husband, of course, is only too familiar with every phase of the disease..

"Ho often remarks how easy it was for him to tell patients who used to be sent to him with the disease that they must resign themselves to sleeplessness, and that they must bear this and put up with that. He is sorry now that he could not quite appreciate how hard life was for them.V