What is Jake leg, Jake leg walk?
The term Jake leg is defined as “a
paralysis caused by drinking improperly distilled or contaminated liquor.” This was a unknown epidemic of paralysis
during the time period of the roaring twenties, leaving many in the medical
field confused. The Jake leg was first identified by blues singers. This
epidemic was during the prohibition, which meant alcohol was banned, leaving
people to find other ways to get the alcoholic fix that they were looking for.
“One way was through a highly alcoholic liquid called Jamaica Ginger or ‘Jake’
that got round the ban by being sold as a medicine.”
Although other disguised medicines were taken off the
market, Jamaica Ginger stayed relatively popular and alcoholic, “due to the
producers including an organophosphate additive called tricresyl phosphate that helped fool the government’s tests. What they didn’t know was that
tricresyl phosphate is a slow-acting neurotoxin that affected the neurons that
control movement.”
“The toxin tricresyl phosphate, starts by causing lower leg
muscular pain and tingling, followed by muscle weakness in the arms and legs.
The effect on the legs caused a distinctive form of muscle paralysis that
required affected people to lift the leg high during walking to allow the foot
to clear the ground, thus earning the name Jake leg walk.” The medical
community still was unaware of the cause behind this paralysis epidemic, and
then they put two and two together. They referred back too who identified the
epidemic, being two blues musicians and looked into these men, they had written
the song Jake Liquor Blues and Alcohol and Jake Blues. “The additive damaged the spinal cord and
peripheral nerves, and the adulterated Jake was slowly tracked down and
outlawed.”
Two neurologists in the year 1978 decided to track down some
of the survivors of Jake poisoning 47 years after the epidemic had hit. What
the neurologists found was that the original explanation was incorrect. “The paralysis was actually due to damage to
the movement control neurons in the brain upper motor neurons and
not the peripheral nervous system."
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