The Story of JP ’ s Story
by JOHN F . RICE , MD , FACR , CHRISTINE B . L . ADAMS , MD & BILL SMOCK , MD , FACEP
Dr . Broca , for the eponymous aphasic stroke which he suffered .
One evening in the early years of my retirement , I came home from playing music with some friends . My wife met me with the news that some doctor from Massachusetts had called and wanted me to call him back , that evening , if possible . His name was Sheldon Benjamin , and I had no idea who he was .
Dr . Benjamin , or Shel , is a professor in the Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts . He explained his interest in medical history , particularly as it applied to his specialties . He was working on a project concerning some of the most famous patients in the neuropsychiatric literature . Among this cohort were such figures as Phineas Gage - famous for surviving an explosion driving a heavy spike through his face and left frontal lobe , and Victor LeBorgne - detailed by his physician
Shel had discovered a paper which I had presented to the Innominate Society in January 2007 , about a year after my retirement . At that time , topics presented at the Society meetings were transcribed and published in Louisville Medicine ( LM ). He had searched the internet for “ JP ,” the case initials of a Louisville man who was extensively documented in the neuropsychiatric literature due to lifelong frontal lobe dysfunction . My LM paper was cited , and he opened and read my paper . Shel asked if I knew anything further about JP and explained his personal scientific interest .
My paper was titled Three Frontal Lobe Guys . The three were : Egas Moniz , winner of the Nobel Prize for describing the “ benefits ” of prefrontal lobotomy ; Walter Freeman , lobotomist extraordinaire ; and Spafford Ackerly , late Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Louisville , whose most famous patient was the aforementioned JP , a young man who had sustained severe bifrontal lobe damage as a result of a difficult birth . Shel , of course , knew about Moniz , Freeman and Ackerly , but was most interested in determining if the brain of JP had been examined post mortem . The cascade of events from that phone call has finally culminated in the publication of “ Lifelong Deficits in Social Adaptation and the Frontal Lobes-New Evidence , Seventy-five Years After Ackerly and Benton ’ s Landmark Case Report of JP ,” published in CORTEX , vol . 158 , pp 4-23 ( Jan-
26 LOUISVILLE MEDICINE