Ataxia after most acute diseases, such as scarlatina and typhoid, is not usually accompanied by loss of the knee-jerk, and never by reflex iridoplegia. The ataxia after diphtheria is complicated by the former, but, as already stated, the very opposite state of the pupil serves to distinguish it.
The hereditary form of tabes is frequently confounded to this day with true tabes dorsalis. The family history and age of the patient are collateral evidences of the nature of the case. In the hereditary form the sphincters, optic nerves, and the eye-muscles are not affected; in the acquired form the first and last are always involved; and this involvement occurs so early in the disease as to constitute a valuable discriminating feature. Although the locomotor ataxia is very similar in the two affections, static ataxia, the symptom manifested on closing the eyes, is not found in the hereditary form, while it is found more constantly than even the locomotor ataxia in the acquired form.
The electrical reactions in tabes are either normal or quantitatively slightly increased. This serves to distinguish it from all spinal affections accompanied by marked paralysis. In the later stages, when some atrophy results, there may be a quantitative decrease, but these are without qualitative changes. A change may occur in those exceptional cases where the anterior gray horns become involved, but we then have to deal with a true complication; and complications can be recognized only in their development and by the application of the diagnostic criteria characterizing the complicating disorder when of an independent occurrence.85
85 It is not impossible that many of the symptoms described as occurring in advanced tabes are due to independent focal disease. In the case of a female aged seventy years mentioned by Hirt (Berliner klinische Wochenschrift, 1885, No. 26), who developed hemiatrophy of the tongue, probably from a hemorrhage in the brain isthmus, there was no tabes, although this symptom when found with tabes is supposed to be part of the tabic symptom-group.
The TREATMENT of tabes dorsalis will be considered at the end of this article, together with that of the sclerotic processes generally. The duration and prospects of the disorder have been considered with the clinical history. In the vast majority of cases the course of the illness is progressive. A few cases have been reported, but in the only instance where an autopsy was made to test the matter it was found that the sclerosis had not been removed. It may be therefore stated that an arrest of the disease is possible, but that restitution of the nerve-elements, once destroyed, is impossible.
Spastic Spinal Paralysis.
SYNONYMS.—Primary lateral sclerosis. Tetanoid pseudo-paraplegia, (Seguin), Tabes dorsal spasmodique. This symptom-group was first recognized by the American neurologist Seguin86 thirteen years ago; two years later Erb87 described it under the title at the head of this section, and about the same time Charcot88 attributed the well-marked clinical signs thus discovered on both sides of the Atlantic to a primary sclerosis of the lateral columns of the cord in that portion which is known as the crossed-pyramid tract, and whose isolated disease had been known to Türck,89 but not clearly brought into relation with what is now regarded as one of the most remarkable and recognizable of spinal symptom-groups. Our earlier knowledge of the disease has been much confused through the discovery by Charcot90 of the same lesion to which spastic paralysis is attributed by him, in a female who had been suffering from permanent contractures of all extremities, and which he persisted in regarding as hysterical. The only solution of the difficulty is to accept one of two alternatives—either believing that the sclerosis was in this case primary, in which case contracture cannot be regarded as hysterical, or that it was secondary to protracted disuse of the limbs, in which case it proves nothing. An additional source of confusion has been the discovery of an analogous affection, now regarded as clinically and pathologically distinct, known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and of a corresponding affection of the lateral columns in a large number of cases of paretic dementia.
86 E. C. Seguin, “Description of a Peculiar Paraplegiform Affection (tetanoid pseudo-paraplegia),” Archives of Scientific and Practical Medicine, February, 1873. Erb's statement (Ziemssen's Cyclopædia, vol. xi. 2, p. 628) that Seguin's description includes symptoms which do not properly appertain here can no longer be sustained, in view of the similar and identical symptoms which have been since attributed to the same affection and to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis by later writers. There seems to be no question that the priority of recognition of the clinical form belongs to this side of the Atlantic.
That Seguin's title was not as badly chosen as Erb implies in his first reference to it may be inferred from the fact that Strümpell, without any reference to Seguin, and evidently independently of him, uses the following language ten years later: “As also in these cases, the movements are not immaterially influenced by the ever-occurring spasms, a motor disturbance may be simulated which we feel inclined to term spastic pseudo-paralysis, or, more correctly, pseudo-paresis” (Pathologie und Therapie).
87 “Ueber einem wenig bekannten spinalen Symptomencomplex,” Berliner klinische Wochenschrift, 1875, No. 26.