Staggering gait, with eyes fixed on the floor.
Could not extend or cross the legs when sitting.
Sensibility unimpaired.
CORRESPONDENCE TO SPINAL DISORDERS.
From these symptoms it will be seen that the effects of the drug correspond to many spinal symptoms, but more especially to what is known as spastic paraplegia. Indeed, Struempel asserts that it produces a perfect picture of this disease.
It is not so often that such a perfect picture of a disease can be had as in this instance. The disease itself is easily recognized by the stiff, spastic gait; the spasm of the adductors, causing the knees to strike each other, or to become locked, causing the patient to fall; the shuffling of the feet; the excessive muscular rigidity and the other well-known symptoms of paraplegia.
Therefore, reasoning from our law we would expect the drug to be of service in such cases, and although our pathogenesis of it is coarse we may be permitted to apply it to a disease whose symptomatology is of the coarse order; for it is often difficult to elicit any fine and characteristic symptoms in diseases like ataxic and spastic paraplegia.
It has been recognized as a remedy by but few of our writers on nervous diseases. O'Connor finds that marked benefit follows its use in old cases of myelitis with marked spastic symptoms. Bartlett, in Goodno's Practice, recommends it in excessive knee-jerk and rigidity. Hart speaks of it as a remedy in locomotor ataxia, but the absence of sensory symptoms and the presence of exaggerated reflexes would seem to contra-indicate it in this disease. He also speaks of it in spinal anemia, giving as symptoms: "Numbness, followed by pain in the lower extremities; sensation of a band around the body; unable to step or distinguish one limb from another"—symptoms which I am unable to find that the remedy produced. Elliott also speaks of it.
CLINICAL RÉSUMÉ.
The clinical record of Lathyrus, though very meagre, gives great hope that it may prove useful in numerous cases of bed-ridden paraplegiacs and in infantile spinal paralysis, as well as in certain forms of myelitis.