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

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It is important to note the long preparetic period: at least a year and a half. Could our diagnostic methods be sharpened a trifle, such cases as these could be obtained early in this preparetic period and it might then be safe to promise good therapeutic results.

2. What is the nature of the preparesis of Dana? When Dana’s brief paper on preparesis was written, there was of course hardly any idea that cases of paretic neurosyphilis could be cured or would recover, except possibly vanishingly few curiosa about which there would always rage a diagnostic question. Accordingly, Dana, having found certain cases that seemed to him to have early signs of paresis but had apparently been cured by treatment, proposed to call them cases of preparesis. His idea was that he would thereby not offend those who held that general paresis was theoretically a fatal disease. With modern work and the display of more and more atypical cases of neurosyphilis, and the observation of relatively numerous cures or remissions under treatment, the designation of preparesis for a separate entity, or even for a sub-form of neurosyphilis, becomes superfluous.