one month, and again in six months, "No improvement in
the pains, but I walk well and briskly, can jump on a moving street-car,
and have ridden a horse twenty miles in a day without fatigue."
This case was in one way favorable for treatment: the patient, an
educated and intelligent man, helped in every way, carrying out minutely
all orders, and had the good sense to begin treatment early. But the
acuteness and rapidity of onset of the tabetic symptoms were so great
that in a little more than two years they had reached a condition which
most cases only attain in from five to ten years, and this makes the
prognosis somewhat less favorable.
In the instance to be next related there was also antecedent syphilis,
and the patient had already been heavily dosed with iodides and
repeatedly salivated with mercury. His recovery was and has remained
remarkably complete.
H.B., travelling salesman, from New York, aet. forty, single, a large,
strongly-made man, a hard worker, given to excesses in sexual
indulgence and alcohol for years. Syphilis was contracted fifteen years
before the first traceable symptoms of ataxia, which had shown
themselves after an attack of grippe, in 1890, in sudden remittent
paralysis of the external muscles of the right eye, followed within a
few months by gastric crises, general lightning pains appearing a few
months later. During the two years succeeding he was drenched with drugs
and grew steadily worse. When admitted to the hospital in 1892 he was
very ataxic in the legs, suffered greatly from gastric and other pains,
difficulties with bladder and rectum, loss of sexual power, various
anaesthetic areas, could not stand with eyes open unless he had help,
total loss of knee-jerk, paralysis of right rectus, indigestion from the
irritation of the stomach from medicines as well as from the disease,
and, though muscular and over-fat, was flabby and pallid. He had no
ataxia or loss of sensibility in the upper half of the body. He was in
bed for two weeks, on milk diet, with warm baths and massage. Systematic
movements were begun and massage continued. After the stomach improved
he grew better with unusual rapidity. He is now able to work hard again,
travels extensively, can walk strongly, but wisely takes his exercise
more in the form of massage and systematic gymnastics. He appears to
report himself once or twice a year. There has been a partial return of
sexual ability.
The next case has points of i
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