Medications are used in multiple sclerosis (MS) to modify the disease course, treat relapses — also called attacks or exacerbations — and manage symptoms. Along with the other essential components of comprehensive MS care, these medications help people manage their MS and enhance their comfort and quality of life.
History of MS Treatments
In 1868, Jean-Martin Charcot defined the clinical features and named the disorder we now know as multiple sclerosis (MS) – and speculation about cause and potential therapies began.
Initially, the treatments applied to an MS patient were those used for any serious neurologic disease and included a list of drugs thought to be sedatives and others that were stimulants:
foxglove, Indian tobacco, aconite, hemlock, coffee, musk, garlic, asafoeteda, valerian, castor, oil of amber, skunk cabbage, alcohol, ether, chloroform, opium, hops, deadly nightshade, henbane, Hoffman anodyne, and extract of hemp.
Other prescriptions might be horseback riding, various herbs, moxibuxon, restricted diet, vigorous massage, draining wounds, hydrotherapy, and electrical stimulation.
~~~~~
“William Moxom, the first to publish cases of MS in the English literature (1870s) prescribed meat diet, bleeding, cooling with sponges, galvanic and faradic electrical stimulation, iron, strychnine, quinine, belladonna, calumbae, arsenic, nux vomica, silver nitrate, hyocynamide, atropine, and ergot.
He concluded that the results were ‘most unsatisfactory’ and ‘no approach to cure has been made.’
~~~~~
In the early 20th century, a lot of therapies applied to MS were those found to be helpful in syphilis, such as
-doses of mercury
-periods of time spent in a fever box
-fever induction with vaccines
-injection of malaria parasites
all of which would make an MS patient feel worse.
Although most neurologists concluded that nothing helped, they all tried some therapies in hopes that they may offer some benefit.
