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What Is Huntington's Chorea?

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One May day in 1956, police in New Jersey stopped a skinny 43-year-old man wandering along the highway (Dobrzynski, 2014). At first glance he appeared to be homeless, they thought his mumblings of being famous were the result being either high or drunk. He proceeded to give them a phone number to reach his manager and realized he wasn’t just famous; he was a folk singing legend. He wrote over 3,000 folk songs, but is most famous for “This Land Is Your Land.” Woody Guthrie was suffering from Huntington's disease, a degenerative neurological disorder, that in the mid 1950’s, the general population knew nothing about. He was soon hospitalized at Greystone Park State Hospital in Morris Plains, New Jersey. His family and friends were there frequently …show more content…

After his discovery he then wrote a paper called On Chorea. His paper was later published in the Medical and Surgical Reporter of Philadelphia and the disorder he described became known as Huntington's Chorea (Phillips, 2001). "Chorea" comes from the Latin and Greek words meaning chorus or a group of dances (Phillips, 2001). It is defined in today’s terms as “any of various nervous disorders (as of humans or dogs) marked by spasmodic movements of limbs and facial muscles and by incoordination (Merrium-webster).” The term was given to many so-called "dancing disorders" that became noticed in the Middle Ages. In those days, people with chorea suffered from involuntary muscle jerks and twitches that are known to be symptomatic of HD (Phillips, 2001). During The Salem Witch Trials that occurred in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692, some of the “witches” are now believed to have had HD. Their choreic movements and odd behavior were seen as possession by the devil (Jourin, 2005). Today the term Huntington's disease is more commonly used than Huntington's Chorea. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this hereditary disease was poorly understood because people who had the HD gene died before the symptoms could develop (Phillips, 2001). Now that we live longer, the HD gene has more time to reveal itself. (Phillips,

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