Word: spastic
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Died. Sylva Eugenie Davis, 20, courageous paralytic, in her sleep; in Kansas City. Suffering from spastic paralysis (the nerve tracts in the neck region of her spinal cord were injured at birth, causing muscular rigidity), she decided last winter to take the 50-50 chance of a surgical operation which might help her, might kill her (TIME, March...
Since she was born 20 years ago, Sylva Eugenie Davis of Kansas City has not been able to use her arms or legs. The nerve tracts in the neck region of her spinal cord were injured at birth, causing spastic paralysis (muscular rigidity). But Sylva was endowed with high courage. She learned to read, turned the pages of her books with her tongue. She used a typewriter by poking the keys with a pencil held between her teeth. With a brush between her teeth she tinted photographs, made drawings. She was careful of her appearance, applied her own cosmetics...
...every spastic paralytic can take a gamble like Sylva's. Sometimes the motor control centres of the brain are injured at birth. Such children may learn to walk after a fashion, but their movements are disordered and uncontrolled. They are often mistakenly considered feebleminded, although the intellectual centres of the brain are intact and the sufferers may be intelligent. Best hope of improvement for such persons is in patient self-education and enlightened help from others. One of the most eminent spastic paralytics in the U. S. is Dr. Earl Reinhold Carlson of Manhattan's Neurological Institute (TIME...
Infant Carlson's birth injury was spastic cerebral diplegia, or (clinically) Little's Disease. Last week one of his Neurological Institute associates described the behavior of the kind of cripple that...