An American writer and Gilles de la Tourette share a birthday. What else was Tourette an expert in? The answer may surprise you!
The date is Wednesday, October 30th, and today I’m coming to you from Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon in Vietnam.
Today is the birthday of Elizabeth Madox Roberts, American writer.
Elizabeth grew up in Springfield, Kentucky in the late 1800s. She attended the University of Kentucky briefly, dropping out on account of poor health. Roberts was gravely disappointed as she wholeheartedly enjoyed literature and philosophy. She moved back home, taking up a career in teaching.
In 1910, Elizabeth had had enough of her hometown and moved to Colorado bear her sister. It seems the new environment was beneficial to her and she began writing more seriously, publishing a short book of poetry. After encouragement from a professor friend, Roberts, at age 36, found herself a college student once again, this time at the University of Chicago. She thrived in the academic community and achieving her lifelong dream of a college education seemed to bolster her can-do spirit. She returned back to Springfield, Kentucky and began writing novels. Her first novel The Time of Man (1926) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and Roberts went on to write ten more novels, all fairly successful during her lifetime.
Elizabeth Maddox Roberts passes away at the age of 59 in 1941 from Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
And today is the birthday of Georges Gilles de la Tourette, French physician.
Although today Tourette is remembered for first recognizing maladie de tics, or Tourette’s Syndrome, he did quite a bit more than that.
Gilles de la Tourette began medical studies at the age of 16. Instead of heading to premier academic institutions in Frances, his mother urged him to go to Poitiers. She was concerned that the “temptations” of Paris would distract and corrupt her son.
However, he could not be kept from Paris forever. At age 20, Tourette enrolled in additional medical studies in Paris. He became a standout pupil of Dr Jean-Martin Charcot, a leading physician and neurologist. Charcot took Tourette on as an assistant when Tourette finished his studies.
As Charcot’s assistant at Salpêtrière Hospital Tourette came in contact with a wide range of patients, which is where he began to make the connection between patient who all exhibited certain tics that they could not control. He wrote a scientific paper on his finding describing it as “maladies de tics,” but it was Charcot who re-named it after Tourette.
Influenced by his mentor Charcot, Tourette took a keen interest in the infant field of neurology. He wrote and lectured extensively on hysteria, hypnosis, and later in life, on forensic science. It’s possible that Sigmund Freud attended some of Tourette’s lectures in Paris and was influenced by his work.
Tourette, for all his smarts, was turned down for advancement in management – it was clear his passion lay in the research and treatment of patients, and not administration. Taking his career as a whole it’s clear Tourette loved the puzzles and mysteries neurology afforded him. Even after a deranged former patient shot at him in his office, Tourette continued to practice, lecture, and write.
Autumn
Elizabeth Maddox Roberts
Dick and Will and Charles and I
Were playing it was election day,
And I was running for president,
And Dick was a band that was going to play,
And Charles and Will were a street parade,
But Clarence came and said that he
Was going to run for president,
And I could run for school-trustee.
He made some flags for Charles and Will
And a badge to go on Dickie’s coat.
He stood some cornstalks by the fence
And had them for the men that vote.
Then he climbed on a box and made a speech
To the cornstalk men that were in a row.
It was all about the dem-o-crats,
And ‘I de-fy any man to show.’
And ‘I de-fy any man to say.’
And all about ‘It’s a big disgrace.’
He spoke his speech out very loud
And shook his fist in a cornstalk’s face.