Читать книгу Neurosyphilis. Modern Systematic Diagnosis and Treatment Presented in One Hundred and Thirty-Seven Case Histories онлайн

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Routine examination of the blood serum, however, yielded a positive W. R. Following the approved rule of making an examination of the spinal fluid in all mental cases having a positive serum W. R., we proceeded to lumbar puncture. The fluid was clear and contained 35 cells per cmm., the albumin was in excess, and there was a positive globulin reaction. The gold sol reaction was of the “paretic” type; the W. R. was strongly positive.

On this basis, it seems worth while to consider the diagnosis of General Paresis or that of some form of non-paretic neurosyphilis. The former is the diagnosis which we prefer.

1. What is the classical differential diagnosis between manic-depressive psychosis and neurosyphilis? The laboratory tests have naturally supplanted the older purely clinical methods of differential diagnosis. The difficulties lodge, in the first instance, in depressive states. It would appear to be impossible on purely clinical grounds in certain cases to tell the depression of neurosyphilis from the depression of manic-depressive psychosis, since the slightly greater interest in the outer world taken by manic-depressive patients and their greater responsiveness to diagnostic threats (suggestion that patient is to be pinched or cut) are of no special value in the individual case. Identical considerations hold for the maniacal phases of manic-depressive psychosis, for these maniacal phases may even develop delusions (Kraepelin) of precisely the same nature as the characteristic expansive delusions of the excited paretic.