Progressive locomotor ataxy : its symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment / by Julius Althaus.

  • Julius Althaus
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Progressive locomotor ataxy : its symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment / by Julius Althaus. 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.

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    more disposed to it than the female. Eomberg says that scarcely one-eighth of the cases are females. In the observations recorded by French authors and tabulated by M. Topinard, the propor- tion is of one female to four males. Amongst the nine cases which I have observed, not one occurred in a woman. As regards occupation, it appears that persons who are much exposed to cold, damp, and fatigue, are more liable to it than others. Two of my patients were commercial travellers, who were continually on the move. Another patient, a young man who had been in good health before the disease broke out, attributed his illness to his having been obliged, after a ball in which he had taken active part, to walk home in thin boots in a pelting rain, having been unable to get a conveyance. In this case tlie symptoms supervened with great rapidity. Soldiers are also very liable to it. The malady, is rife, says Romberg, when the strength is much taxed by continued standing in a bent posture, by forced marches, and the catarrhal influences of wet bivouacs, followed by drunkenness and debauchery, as is so often the case in campaigns; and this is the reason why tabes dorsalis was so fre(][uent during the first decennia following the great French wars of the present century. The malady breaks out more frequently in autumn and winter than in spring and summer. Most patients who have the disease improve during the summer months; and we must, therefore, be