This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

Jay- thanks for the continued research on Dr. Putnam. The fact that he stood up to anti-semitism makes me admire him even more.

A new biography on Dr. Putnam was release a year ago-

The Legacy of Tracy J Putnam and H. Houston Merritt: Modern Neurology in the United States- Lewis P Roland



Since he settled in LA, would be interesting to see if he has any family members still in town. Might give the autobiographer a quick call or e-mail. We'll see. Dr. Putnam, thanks.
cheer

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Husband dx RRMS 3/07
dx dual jugular vein stenosis (CCSVI) 4/09
dual stents placed 5/09
CCSVI in MS

double

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Husband dx RRMS 3/07
dx dual jugular vein stenosis (CCSVI) 4/09
dual stents placed 5/09
CCSVI in MS

Cheer - that would be great. I emailed the author of the story about the brain cancer child he helped, I didn't catch that this biography was so recent. Hopefully you can find someone.

I wonder how many other breakthroughs and cures there are for serious neurological conditions that are waiting to be discovered by reading what was written about them 70 years ago?

Wow! Those are some interesting posts and links. The anti-semetic stuff is saddening, but not surprising given the times. Bad times to call yourself a human being.





I think with the advances in imaging you'll start to see connections with older studies in lots of these conditions. Hopefully ccsvi gets people looking for all sorts of correlations between physical differences and accompanying symptoms.

how does the eae thing work out with this study. Is the encepholomyelitis the dogs get like eae? how close? If nothing else this points to a better way to bring on an 'animal model' of ms for experiments. Woof woof.

Billmeik - read the post by jugular earlier in this thread for your answer -

I found what might be Dr. Putnam's obituary in the LA Times
<shortened url>

Does anyone have an account there to get a copy of this? I'm not positive it's his, I have an email in the them asking if they could confirm it is before I purchase it myself.

It doesn't say much, just a notice, no info beyond his name and "private services".

Also, he went to Columbia, and lived in the Bronx for a spell.

Here's some more sniffable stuff....


Tracy J Putnam born Apr 14 1894 Massachusetts, died Mar 29 1975 Los Angeles.


Name: Tracy Jackson Putnam
Birth - Death: 1894-
Source Citation:
•Biography Index. A cumulative index to biographical material in books and magazines. Volume 1: January, 1946-July, 1949. New York: H.W. Wilson Co., 1949. (BioIn 1)
•Index to Scientists of the World from Ancient to Modern Times. Biographies and portraits. By Norma Olin Ireland. Boston: F.W. Faxon Co., 1962. (InSci)

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RRMS Dx'd 2007, first episode 2004. Bilateral stent placement, 3 on left, 1 stent on right, at Stanford August 2009. Watch my operation video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwc6QlLVtko, Virtually symptom free since, no relap

Not without a reason the German MS-society is one of the worst in the world and is lying or blocking information about CCSVI in MS at most.
Good German tradition!

Arne
who is at this point very, very ashamed to be a German

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Dr. Georges Schaltenbrand (1897-1979)= a Nazi war criminals,
1940 human experiments at the Psychiatric Clinic in Werneck,
1945 First Chairman of the German Society of Neurology
1953 Chairman of the Medical Advisory Board of DMSG

Killing by starvation in the institutions
and other previous crimes of psychiatry

Those who honor the perpetrators murder their victims a second time.

.....He draws brain and spinal fluids (liquor) from MS-patients and by injecting monkeys with the fluid he believes them to develop a form of MS. Patients at the Franconian Anstalt Werneck, on the other hand, receive injections with the monkeys’s liquor. Again, the experimental study is supported by the German Association of Research (DFG) and it ends in October 1940, with the patients’s transportation to the gas chambers. After 1945, Georg Schaltenbrand becomes First Chair of the German Association of Neurology........

Read/learn more because unfortunately Schaltenbrand wasn’t the only Nazi criminals who came to fame after 1945 in Germany!:
http://www.irren-offensive.de/kleespeech.htm

yeah...well, I'm German/Jewish heritage muse, so I share those complicated feelings with you. I'm really not sure why the German MS or English MS societies have dismissed CCSVI research without any investigation. I remain confident that they will eventually change their minds.

Here's a wonderful chapter by medical historian Colin Talley on MS treatments in Los Angeles from 1947-60. Lots of info on Putnam, and his life as a private practice neurologist in Beverly Hills after he had been run out of New York for not going along with the anti semitic hiring at Columbia.
link

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Husband dx RRMS 3/07
dx dual jugular vein stenosis (CCSVI) 4/09
dual stents placed 5/09
CCSVI in MS

Charles Dana, leading neurologist and professor of the New York Post-Graduate Medical School, wrote in 1892 on the treatment of multiple sclerosis
...Hygienic measures, electricity, and hydrotherapy must be employed. . . .Internally the use of large doses of iodide of potassium, the hypodermicinjection of arsenic, the administration of nitrate of silver and of quinine andother tonics are advised. A very regular, systematic, and quiet mode of life,combined with the use of iodide of potassium and bichloride of mercury, hasproduced the best results in my experience, even in cases which gave nohistory of syphilitic infection.

I have a muster roll (from a field hospital) that my ancestor was on, war of 1812 where they were treating another soldier on that page with mercury, then he mysteriously became deaf and mute.

Wow, treating MS patients with arsenic, mercury. Lovely.

Sounds like we're still just a bunch of guinea pigs. So sorry Putnam had the Moses experience, never entering the promised land, but he still saw it!! I didn't gather from my diggings that he had any offspring either.

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RRMS Dx'd 2007, first episode 2004. Bilateral stent placement, 3 on left, 1 stent on right, at Stanford August 2009. Watch my operation video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwc6QlLVtko, Virtually symptom free since, no relap

Thanks Joan and all the rest of you for these links to Dr. Putnam’s research. Fascinating reading.

I found these couple of paragraphs pretty poignant in regards to today’s MS Society’s current views on CCSVI, Which seems to be telling patients to adopt a “wait and see position.” What happened to “encouraging patients to inform themselves about the disease, to be active participants in their choice of treatment and their willingness to experiment with those treatments.”?

Thanks again for the excellent read,
Lora

1940s and 1950s
As long as a physician had a reasonable theory of the pathogenesis of the disease, it was thought permissible to experiment with therapies, despite equivocal evidence, as long as no harm was done. Indeed, for physicians faced with declining and suffering patients, there was a strong emotional imperative to attempt treatments without waiting for an agreed-upon proof of efficacy. This was sustained, in part, by pressure to treat from many
patients who shared their physicians’ willingness to experiment with treatments.

The MS Society lobbied publishers to include articles on MS in their
magazines and newspapers. Raymond Moley, a contributing editor at
Newsweek, became the first chairman of the Public Education Committee
and chaired the first press conference of the AARMS. He was instrumen-
tal in placing articles in magazines and newspapers. The Society in-
tended the magazine articles not only to increase public awareness of the
malady but also to instill hope in MS sufferers. These articles encouraged
patients to inform themselves about the disease, to be active participants.

Dr. Cornelius H. Traeger, of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, expressed this new faith in science in 1949 when he testified before Congress on a bill to fund MS research: “If you get enough people and give them enough money you will get an atomic bomb. If you get enough people who are interested and have genius and give them the wherewithal you will get the answer.”

As one MS patient put it in 1954: “I know that, in this age of atomic energy,
antibiotics and radioactive isotopes, a cure for my trouble is around the scientific corner.”

If you look at medical history in general, there were times when they treated almost everything with arsenic and mercury - the conclusion merely was:"If there's a side effect, there has to be an effect." Moreover, there were times when neurology and psychiatry weren't divided. And the crimes in early psychiatry are unspeakable.

On the other hand, it seems to me there were times when really new and big discoveries and inventions were made, driven not by commercial interests but purely by scientific curiosity. And it seems to me that these times are more or less over, as all too often scientific curiosity is hindered by commerce. (This applies not only to medical science.)

This thread really is a thriller.

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"There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance." Socrates

that's just interesting historical info on how eae became the animal model for ms research. It was encephalomyelitis, the dogs got the same. They were different forms, but how different? Is fake ccsvi a way to bring on eae? or is it a way to bring on something different?

Anybody know?

When I was diagnosed I just happened to have a talk with a person who ran a rat-shelter who also had a lot of contacts with scientists. (labrats) She told me that I should not get my hopes up about meds and research as it was all based on EAE which had nothing to do with MS...and that researchers were fully aware of it. This was in '02.

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dx 2002,RRMS,  suspected begin of MS 1978 (age 10)