There are in these series of cases many facts which might reasonably be
made the subject of remarks, and several of the cases are certainly of
great individual interest. But they are here displayed in the above
grouping for the purpose of illustrating the clinical order and sequence
in which, as a matter of actual experience, the ocular disturbances of
locomotor ataxia may manifest themselves in relation to the spinal
evidences of that disease. Of course, in those cases in which there
exists only a single ocular symptom unaccompanied by any sign of spinal
disease, it may be objected that it has yet to be demonstrated that such
cases are of the nature of locomotor ataxia. It is doubtless to be
desired that such cases should be under exact observation as long as the
opportunity for further developments exists—that is, for the entire life
of the patient. But to insist upon such a condition is a mere counsel of
perfection. One must make reasonable use of such evidence as the brevity
of life and the exigencies of practice permit. And the evidence here set
forth affords at least a very strong presumption, to say the least of
it, of the truth of the doctrines stated in the earlier paragraphs of
this paper. Probably the particular proposition which is most likely to
be contested is the one which places the Argyll-Robertson pupil equally
with optic-nerve atrophy, and an ocular paralysis, as a possible first
event in the eruption of the phenomena of locomotor ataxia. But on
turning to the records it will be found that the facts support this
suggestion almost as strongly as they support the corresponding
suggestion in reference to optic-nerve atrophy and ocular paralysis.
Attention in this respect may be particularly given to Case XIII. The
man complains of a quite recent diplopia, and he has undoubtedly had
syphilis; the pupils show the Argyll-Robertson phenomenon. It is in the
highest degree probable that, had the patient been under observation a
week or two earlier, the condition of the pupils would have been the
sole existing ocular abnormality. Yet in the light of the development of
an ocular paralysis, it can scarcely be doubted that, whether he develop
spinal symptoms or not, his nervous system is the site of diseased
processes of the locomotor ataxia order. When to these facts there are
added, as in Cases XIV. to XVII., illustrations of the various forms and
degrees of evidence of spinal disease that may be associated with the
Argyll-Robertson pupil, it seems impossible to resist the conclusions
that the condition of the pupil so named may be the first evidence of
locomotor ataxia; that it may precede by varying intervals other
evidences of the disease; and that at least very probably, in a certain
number of cases, the symptomatology of the disease may be permanently
restricted to this one event. In some examples of its spinal form
locomotor ataxia is undoubtedly an extremely chronic disease, with few
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