Shake the Disease. Georges Marinesco, Paul Blocq and the Pathogenesis of Parkinsonism, 1893

Abstract

James Parkinson, in his “Essay on the Shaking Palsy” from 1817 described for the first time the disease that later on carried his name. Its anatomical substrate remained controversial for over 100 years. The first case that suggested the association between Parkinson’s disease and substantia nigra was published in 1893 Blocq and Marinesco, two scientists who worked at Salpêtrière. The article described a 38 years-old man, with tuberculosis, who was admitted to the Charcot’s neurological ward because he also showed signs of unilateral Parkinsonism. During the autopsy, the investigators found a tubercle that destroyed the right substantia nigra. As the patient had overactive reflexes on the left side and the symptomatology matched exactly the localization of the tumor, Blocq and Marinesco suggested the Parkinsonism to be more likely a complication of tuberculosis and not an incidental finding. In this article, we will discuss the contribution of these two authors to the elucidation of the pathology of Parkinson’s disease, and highlight how even a single case report may play an essential role in the development of knowledge in biomedical sciences.

An order in Lewy body disorders: Retrograde degeneration in hyperbranching axons as a fundamental structural template accounting for focal/multifocal Lewy body disease

“…Although a single autopsy case of midbrain lesion with tuberculoma reported by Blocq and Marinesco suggested its relation to Parkinsonian tremor and rigidity, pathological substrates of PD had not been identified until Friedrich Heinrich Lewy (1912) first identified eosinophilic inclusions in the dorsal motor nucleus (dmX) of the vagus nerve and nucleus basalis of Meynert in these patients . Even though it remained to be clarified how this multifocal involvement with pathological inclusions, now described as alpha‐synuclein (αS) deposits, is related to various clinical manifestations of PD.…”

Neuropathology in Pitié‐Salpêtrière hospital: Past, present and prospect

“…Paul Richer modeled a famous statuette representing an old woman: “ Attitude and facies in Parkinson ' s disease, after a patient of La Salpêtrière ”. Based on an observation made by Blocq and Marinesco, Brissaud emphasized the role of substantia nigra in Parkinsonism . Later, in 1919, Tretiakoff, a Russian medical student who wrote his thesis at La Salpêtrière under the supervision of Pierre Marie, gave the name of “Lewy bodies” (Fig.…”

“…Later, in 1919, Tretiakoff, a Russian medical student who wrote his thesis at La Salpêtrière under the supervision of Pierre Marie, gave the name of “Lewy bodies” (Fig. ) to the inclusions initially described by Friedrich Lewy …”

George Marinesco in the Constellation of Modern Neuroscience

“…Marinesco published (early in his career) an extremely necessary atlas (Marie, 1896 ; Marinesco, 1896a , b ) on the pathological histology of the nervous system, together with the Romanian bacteriologist Victor Babes and the French pathologist Paul Oscar Blocq (Blocq and Marinesco, 1892 ; Hostiuc et al, 2016 ). His description with Blocq, of a case of Parkinsonian tremor due to the substantia nigra tumors in 1893, was the basis for Édouard Brissaud's theory that Parkinsonism occurs as a consequence of damage to the substantia nigra (Blocq and Marinesco, 1893 ).…”

“…Member in Romanian Academy . In 1906 he is elected as full member of the Romanian Academy, where he presented his acceptance speech to the Romanian Academy entitled Progresses and Trends of Modern Medicine (Hostiuc et al, 2016 ).…”