Henry Meige (1866-1940)
A grimacing face … not an expression of pain or disgust but a neurological condition:
A Meige syndrome
Forceful dystonic spasms of the face, in particular when trying to speak or to eat have been called Meige syndrome.
Henry Meige was a French neurologist who published as a junior neurologist, about facial tics with his friend Feindel in 1894 and 2 years later with his maitre Brissaud about neck dystonia, which he is called Torticollis mental (1896). From then, he studied patients with facial movements disorders, not only the tics but what he called “les convulsions de la face”. He also kept a fascination for the spasmodic torticollis that he recognized publically as an organic disease in 1929 after seeing patients suffering from Encephalitis Lethargica and reading the work of Oppenheim (1911) on Dystonia Musculorum Deformans.
In 1910 he described a Bi-blepharospasm (what we call now Blepharospasm) to emphasize that both eyes were affected, with sometimes a positive family history and which could spread to the laryngeal, mouth floor, jaw and even tongue muscles.
Meige syndrome is now an eponym to describe a blepharospasm associated with a dystonia of the muscles of the lower part of the face and the larynx as described by Meige in 1910. Patients with Meige syndrome are patients over the age of 60, who complains of involuntary eye closure when trying to speak or to chew. The speech or the chewing is affected and the tongue is involuntary pulled out. It usually starts with a blepharospasm, which spreads down in 35 % of the cases to the mouth and the neck. The pattern of activation of the eye closure changes from an isolated blepharospasm which is better when the patient is speaking and worst when the patient is silent to a spasm of eye closure when the mouth is activated.
Meige syndrome has to be treated actively with anticholinergic drugs if tolerated, clonazepam and Botulinum toxin injections into all the dystonic muscles of the face (eyes, jaw, tongue, larynx, neck) ; the facial grimaces can settle and patients with Meige syndrome should keep hope for a better future.
More study is needed to understand the long term prognosis of this condition.
For further reading, I advice you 2 papers from 1976 and 1982 of Professor CD Marsden
Spastic dysphonia,Meige disease and torsion dystonia. CD Marsden, MP Sheehy.1982
http://www.neurology.org/content/32/10/1202.extract
Blepharospasm-oromandibular dystonia syndrome: a form of adult –onset torsion dystonia, CD Marsden, 1976
http://ukpmc.ac.uk/articles/PMC492566/pdf/jnnpsyc00174-0060.pdf
Infodystonia 