Although they never met, Dr. Parkinson and Dr. Alzheimer are now collaborating through table tennis. Dr. James Parkinson, 1755-1824, studied medicine, along with many other sciences, in his native England. The first to identify and describe the tremors he called "paralysis agitans," Parkinson would be posthumously immortalized when the disease was named after him. Forty years after Parkinson died, one Aloysius Alzheimer was born in Germany. Working as a psychiatrist and neuropathologist in an asylum, Dr. Alzheimer pioneered research in "presenile dementia," the condition for which he now serves as the eponym 105 years after his death. If variables of time, space and language were more easily manipulated, it would be a lucky fly indeed who landed on a wall within earshot of a conversation between two groundbreaking doctors. Less lucky, of course, are the millions afflicted with the diseases which bear their names. There is, however, one ray of hope shared by both groups which has been brightening in intensity in recent years. For both Parkinson's and Alzheimer's patients, table tennis has emerged as an unexpected but undeniably effective treatment. In New York, Croatian musician Nenad Bach noticed that playing table tennis effected a dramatic improvement in his Parkinson's symptoms. At Pleasantville, New York's Westchester Table Tennis Center, Bach has teamed up with club owner Will Shortz and a team of doctors to create Ping Pong Parkinson, a weekly game night for Parkinson's patients. The overwhelming success of the club has led to advances in medical research, and the club even staged the first ever Parkinson's World Championships last year. The development of Ping Pong Parkinson into a global initiative has been supported by the International Table Tennis (ITTF) Foundation. This philanthropic wing of the ITTF has now branched out to support Ping 4 Alzheimer's, a club finding comparably encouraging results in France. Meeting weekly at the Levallois Table Tennis Sporting Club, Ping 4 Alzheimer brings those suffering from the disease together for a supportive, structured regimen of balancing exercises, informal instruction and open play. Psychologist Judith Mollard cites many benefits of the Tuesday night club for Alzheimer's patients, particularly for their "procedural memory, the body's sensory-motor memory." Patients' caretakers are encouraged to play, for the benefit of both parties. "The goal is to feel that they are at the heart of a group that is doing the same thing all together, whether they are sick, not sick, caregivers or families," says Ping 4 Alzheimer's founder Renato Walkowiak, "and in the end, we can't tell who's who." It seems clear that table tennis can shed light on the etiologies described by Dr. Parkinson and Dr. Alzheimer. Although the doctors were divided by decades and disciplines, their modern-day patients are united by the therapeutic efficacy of table tennis.

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