When I was a second year medical student, they brought in a patient with Huntington’s Disease. It was called Huntington’s Chorea in those days.
The patient was in a wheelchair. She had a drawn haggard appearance. She had some uncontrollable movements. She looked much older than her age.
Huntington’s Disease is an inherited disorder. It is dominant trait. Therefore, a parent will give it to approximately half of the children. The problem is that it usually does not begin to show up until the fourth decade of life between the ages 30 and 40.
Chorea stands for bizarre body movements that occur without any control by the individual. Chorea was one of the most prominent early symptoms of the disease. That is why it was called Huntington’s Chorea for years.
The movements can include involuntary jerking or writhing movements. They can include rigidity of the muscles. They can include slow or unusual eye movements. They can include trouble walking or keeping balance. They can include trouble with speech. They can include trouble with swallowing.
There is cognitive dysfunction. They have organization problems. They can stuck on a topic (called perseveration) and not change the subject easily. They can become lose impulse control and have outbursts without any reason. They can have trouble finding the right words. They can have trouble learning.
They also have a variety of mental health disorders. They can get depressed. They can withdraw socially. They can appear to be bipolar with episodes of manic behavior.
My other contact with a patient with Huntington’s Disease was when I was a fourth year medical student. We had a conference discussing the disorder in someone who had died from it. The instructor did a genealogy on the patient.
He was able to trace the family back several hundred years. One of the ancestors of the patient had been killed as a witch in Salem.
Subsequently, other researchers have found the same thing with the families of other patients. There appears to have been more than one of the Salem witches with Huntington’s Disease.
When you think about the symptoms, it is not a far stretch to feel that the bizarre behavior has a source. Since genetics did not exist between March 1692 and May 1693, it is not surprising that people looked for a supernatural explanation for these symptoms.
We may have advanced from a genetics standpoint since then. However, our ability to come up with bizarre explanations for things only has to go back a few years. The number of false stories that dotted the COVID pandemic shows that it is still popular to make up an answer when one is not sure.