The Neuromuscular Junction

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The Death Penalty

The Issue:  Is the death penalty consistent with the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against the imposition of cruel and unusual punishments

sodium thiopental (barbiturate) d-turbocurarine or pancuronium bromide

KCl

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Sleepy of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs – modeled after a friend of Walt Disney who had MG

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Thomas Willis, 1672, he published De Anima Brutorum(the Soul of Brutes)

included, as one of many clinical studies, a report of a woman who had a long-standing paralysis that affected her limbs and her tongue

“She speaks freely and readily enough for a while, but after a long period of speech … she is not able to speak a word and is as mute as a fish… Her voice does not return for one or two hours”

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Signs and Symptoms

Initial symptoms of MG may include difficulty speaking (dysarthria), difficulty swallowing (dysphagia), drooping eyelids (ptosis), and double vision (diplopia). Patients often have nasal-sounding speech and weak neck muscles that give the head a tendency to fall forward or backward.

These symptoms occur in about 90% of MG cases, are usually intermittent (i.e., come and go), and may disappear for weeks and then recur

Myasthenia Gravis

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Attorney: This myasthenia gravis-does it affect your memory at all?Witness: Yes.Attorney: And in what ways does it affect your memory?Witness: I forget.

Attorney: You forget. Can you give us an example of something that you've forgotten?

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