In 1852, the great novelist was found dead at Moscow of exhaustion, or rather of tabes dorsalis, in front of the shrine before which he was accustomed to lie for days in silent prayer.
Vogel and Steiner assert thattabes mesenterica is a common result of enteritis folliculosa.
Tabes mesenterica may be briefly defined to be tuberculosis of the mesenteric glands.
These and other facts strongly indicate that the form of syphilis which ends in tabes or paresis remains infectious over a much longer time than ordinary syphilis does.
Ledermann reported three cases, and Nonne others, in which the wives of men with tabes or paralysis bore syphilitic children and yet never responded positively themselves to the Wassermann test, or showed any symptoms suggesting syphilis.
Syphilis that affects the nervous system as in tabes and paresis is an incurable syphilis, and there is no means whereby any physician, no matter how skilful he may be, can tell whether or not a given patient has such an infection.
More rarely it appears as tabes mesenterica in infants, tubercular peritonitis, and tubercular disease of the internal organs.
But this decline is apparently less marked in tabes than in phthisis or tubercular meningitis, i.
Laryngeal crises of tabes might, because of their sudden onset, be thought due to foreign body.
In para-syphilitic lesions such as general paralysis and tabes a positive reaction is almost always present.
The wounds heal well, but the victims of tabes are unfavourable subjects for operative interference, on account of their liability to intercurrent complications.
The diagnosis =tabes dorsalis incipiens= was made (hematomyelia of conus terminalis eliminated).
It is perhaps easier to prove that shell explosion may precipitate neurosyphilis in the form of tabes dorsalis (take, for example, Cases 21 and 22).
Very intriguing to the diagnostician would be the cases of pseudotabes and pseudoparesis (Cases 23 and 26 of Pitres and Marchand), were such cases at all frequent.
The muscular weakness was decidedly against tabes or at all events a pure tabes.
Shell-explosion may precipitate neurosyphilis in the form of tabes dorsalis.
The artilleryman proved to be a victim of tabes and of general paresis.
A combination of tabes with lateral sclerosis, or with general paralysis of the insane, is sometimes seen, but needs no special consideration.
Very frequently in tabes and in diabetes, a purulent blister is the first indication of trouble, but usually a marked epithelial thickening, in the form of a corn or a bunion, is the initial symptom.
There is no doubt, for instance, that certain cases of intractable dyspepsia are associated with tabesand that in nearly the same way obstinate constipation frequently develops.
In the same way when overstretching of the spinal cord by forcibly bending of the body at the hips was tried with reported success in tabes it was also applied to paralysis agitans with similar improvement of symptoms.
Certainly locomotor ataxic patients would seem the least likely to be benefited by training in movement and yet this movement therapy for tabes has had some wonderful results.
With an ever-increasing knowledge of the widespread character of this disease and its manifold variations in the complex of symptoms, the tendency among neurologists is to revert to the term employed by Romberg--tabes dorsalis.
It is now conceded on all sides that at least 75 per centum of the cases of tabes are directly due to syphilis.
Tabes dorsalis, or locomotor ataxia, is caused in about 93 per centum of cases of this disease by syphilis, and it is an incurable and dreadful malady.
Tabes is the natural consequence of this error; but its effect is evinced by the occurrence of other disorders.
