Six years later, the American neurologist Bernard Sachs published the clinical and pathological findings. Sachs noted the familiar nature of the conditions, which he called amaurotic familial idiocy.
Barney Sachs was born on February 8, 1858. Sachs used and preferred this name throughout his life, but used Bernard professionally.
Barney began his collegiate education at City College of New York, transferring eventually to Harvard where he received his baccalaureate degree at the top of his class, in 1878. In October 1878 Sachs began his medical studies at Strasbourg in Alsace.
On June 6, 1882, Sachs was awarded his MD degree. In 1887 Sachs assembles his personal observations on the disease that would eventually bear his name, Tay-Sachs disease.
His inaugural publication on this subject appeared in the September, 1887, issue of the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease with title, ‘On arrested cerebral development with special reference to its cortical pathology’.
In 1898, Sachs, recognized a familial pattern in the transmission of the disease and characterized the three principal manifestations of the disorder: the arrest of all mental processes, the progressive weakening of muscle terminating in general paralysis, and rapidly developing blindness.
By 1896, a number of other physicals had observed and reported similar symptoms in their young patients. Scientists named the disease after the two men who identified it: Tay-Sachs disease.
Bernard Sachs (1858-1944)
