A Case of Multiple Neuritis in a Woman, of Combined Syphilitic and Alcoholic Origin; Treatment by Electro-Massage; Complete Recovery 1It formed the subject of a clinical lecture in the Royal Infirmary in February 1888.

was first, though imperfectly, described by Dumenil in 1864. But the subject dropped out of notice until 1876, when Eichhorst reported a case under the name of " Acute Progressive Neuritis," in which he found peripheral nerve degeneration without change in the brain or spinal cord. Three years afterwards, Eisenlohr and Joffroy brought forward fresh cases of the disease, followed in 1880 by contributions by Leyden, and in the following year by Lancereaux and Grainger Stewart. The last-named observer reported three well-marked cases of the disease, in one of which the autopsy showed the nerves only to be diseased, the brain and spinal cord being almost healthy. The pathological changes found in the diseased nerves consisted in a more or less complete atrophy of the nerve fibres, with thickening of the perineurium, and accumulation of fat cells between the bundles; together, as pointed out by Leyden, the deposit of pigment around the bloodvessels, which, as he thinks, gives evidence of an inflammatory hemorrhagic condition of the tissue between the nerve fibres, which by compression leads to their atrophy. (See Drawings). The disease described by each of these observers is characterized by a combined group of associated symptoms occurring together or in quick succession, which, until demonstrated to the contrary by the clinical facts and post-mortem evidence referred to, were believed to originate in spinal disease. These symptoms, in many respects closely resembling others induced by disease of the brain or cord, or both, are now becoming better known as pathognomonic of certain degenerative alterations occurring in the peripheral nerves, which, if unarrested, tend to the complete destruction of their functions. This disease is one occurring mostly in women between the ages of 30 and 50