ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, was discovered in 1869 by French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, whose country still calls it “Charcot’s disease.”
It exploded into the American consciousness 70 years later with the announcement by baseball legend Lou Gehrig — who for decades held the record for the most consecutive games played — that he was retiring at age 36 due to a deadly disease.
“The past two weeks you’ve been reading about a bad break,” an already hobbled Gehrig told a packed Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939. “Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.