Cerebral Palsy

To find the first medical descriptions of cerebral palsy, we have to go back to the 1860s, when an English surgeon named William Little wrote about a puzzling disorder he had noticed in some children. It seemed that in the first years of their lives, this disorder caused stiff, tightening muscles mostly in the children's legs and sometimes in their arms. These children had trouble grasping objects, crawling, and walking. They did not get better as they grew up, but they didn't seem to get any worse, either. Their condition, which was called Little's disease for many years, is now known as spastic diplegia.

People with spastic diplegia have very tight and stiff muscles (that's the “spastic” part) in either both of their legs or both of their arms (that's the “di” part). These stiff muscles make it hard for a person to move correctly (that's the “plegia” part, which is a Latin word for paralyzed or weak). Spastic diplegia is just one of several disorders that affect the muscles that control our movement and are grouped together under the term “cerebral palsy.”

William Little felt that the reason many of these children were born with this condition was because there were difficulties during their births. He wrote that their condition seemed to be caused by a lack of oxygen during birth and that this lack of oxygen had somehow damaged the brain tissues that control movement.

Other doctors, however, felt that the disorder might have its beginnings not during or after birth, but earlier in life, while the brain was still developing in the womb. But it was William Little's theory—that cerebral palsy was caused by birth complications—that was the most acceptable to physicians, families, and even medical researchers. Until very recently.