Medicine Rocks

Thankfully this post has nothing to do with vaccines.

Came across this article this morning, and it reminded me about how fantastic and under appreciated medical advances have become.

<Editor’s note: for reasons that befuddle me, today’s post celebrates Switzerland in two different, yet wonderful ways. Switzerland, at the occasional forefront of medicine.>

Spinal implant helps man with advanced Parkinson’s to walk without falling

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03452-1

The technology, developed by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), enables the man to walk fluidly and to navigate terrain without falling — something he couldn’t do before the treatment. Parkinson’s causes uncontrollable movements and difficulty with coordination that worsens over time.

The effects of the treatment have lasted for two years. “There are no therapies to address the severe gait problems that occur at a later stage of Parkinson’s, so it’s impressive to see him walking,” says Jocelyne Bloch, a neurosurgeon at the EPFL and a lead author of the paper.

Without stating the obvious, Parkinson’s disease is just dreadful. Your brain literally deteriorates. It’s awful.

But we are finding ways to treat it (no cure yet!)

What I love about this article is that it summarizes how far we have come not only in understanding the disease, but it understanding the brain, the brain’s electrical underpinnings and the body’s mechanics.

Modern medicine is amazing.

A brief aside to further this point. Consider the c-section.

• Dates back to the Roman Empire with a probably incorrect attribution to Caesar.

• It took until a fine Swiss sow gelder named Jacob Nufer in 1500 to find an occurrence where the mother survived. SURVIVED.

• Now? It’s probably too many, but as many as 1 in 3 births are thought to be C-sections. And the mother is usually discharged in 3 or fewer days.

PS: How good of a thing is it that we don’t have dedicated sow gelders anymore? For sows and for society.

And for the Swiss.