Medicine: Mystery Crippler

The patient first notices a pins-&-needles sensation in his legs. After a time his head and shoulders may twitch, his eyeballs roll wildly, he sees double, reels when walking, stumbles in his speech, from time to time is seized by uncontrollable laughing or crying jags. In advanced stages he may be paralyzed.

The patient is not drunk. These are symptoms of a mysterious, widespread disease known as multiple sclerosis, a disorder of the nervous system. Doctors have recognized it for nearly 100 years (the German poet Heinrich Heine is believed to have died of it), but they have never discovered its cause...

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