JMS PearceEast Yorks, England The eponymous Duchenne muscular dystrophy still provokes a sense of sadness in afflicted families and therapeutic impotence in their medical attendants. Although both Edward Meryon (1852) and Wilhelm Griesinger (1865) published early case reports, when Duchenne described the progressive, sex-linked, recessive muscular dystrophy of early childhood, the disorder was almost unknown…