The relation of locomotor ataxia and paresis / by J. Ramsay Hunt.

  • Hunt, James Ramsay, 1872-1937.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The relation of locomotor ataxia and paresis / by J. Ramsay Hunt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    1/6
    // Sdtij Reprinted fr THE RELATIO Journal for ATAXIA AND By J. Ramsay Hunt, M. D., New York, Chief of the Neurological Clinic and Instructor in Nervous Dis- eases in the Cornell University Medical College; Neurolo- gist to the City and the Babies’ Hospitals. In the whole chapter of locomotor ataxia there is no question of greater importance than the rela- tion which this affection bears to the general paralysis of the insane. The importance of this re- lation is not merely a clinical one, but has a much deeper significance as bearing upon the underlying nature and aetiology of the two diseases. In the present communication there will be no discussion of the symptomatology of tabes or of paresis. My remarks will be confined to the combinations of the two diseases and the nature and significance of the so called “taboparesis.” When they occur together is it to be regarded as a mere coincidence or com- plication, or are the two affections essentially the same in nature, differing only in their localization? As is well known, tabes dorsalis is a disease char- acterized by degenerative changes in the posterior roots and posterior columns of the spinal cord. An antecedent syphilis is now generally regarded as the essential aetiological factor in the production of this degeneration (variously estimated from fifty to ninety per cent, of the cases). This is not syphilis in the ordinary acceptation of the term; but pre- sumably a toxic state following in its wake, the so called parasyphilis or metasyphilis. •Discussion on Locomotor Ataxia, at the meeting of the Medical Association of the Greater City of New York, March 16, 1908. Copyright, 1908, by A. R. Elliott Publishing Company.