Traumatic Brain Injury

Abstract

It was in a June 1934 exhibition game when the pitcher Ray White of the Norfolk Tars threw a fastball striking the Yankees’ Lou Gehrig above the right eye, knocking him unconscious. Although the head injury was not a singular event of this kind for Gehrig, it was instrumental in raising some controversy decades later that “Lou Gehrig’s disease,” otherwise known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or “ALS,” was at least confounded by the history of multiple head injuries of traumatic origin. A connection was found in a project investigating the effects of brain trauma in National Football League players. Fourteen former players over the past 50 years were found who had been diagnosed with ALS. No causal relationship was found between head injury and the eventually fatal motor neuron disease. Also, the researchers did conclude that the players did not in fact have the disease (ALS). However, they did find evidence indicating that brain trauma can cause brain degeneration resulting in an “ALS-like disorder”. Beyond this conclusion, the authors went further to suggest that Lou Gehrig himself might have suffered from something other than ALS as a result of the multiple blows to the head which he had sustained across his career.