s may occur suddenly, but, in
the majority of cases, it comes on slowly and insidiously, with weakness
and numbness of the feet and legs, or with tingling and a sensation
resembling that produced by ants creeping on the surface of the skin. By
degrees the weakness increases, until there is complete loss of both
motion and sensation in the feet and legs. The lower bowel and bladder
are generally involved, and as a result, the patient suffers from
constipation, and retention and dribbling of urine. Although completely
paralyzed, the patient is often tormented with involuntary movements and
cramps in the affected muscles.

Paraplegia may be caused by various injuries of the spinal cord; by
congestion, degeneration, or hemorrhage; by pressure from thickening of
the sheath of the cord, or from tumors, or from disease of the bones and
cartilages of the spinal column. Paraplegia may also be produced through
reflex action, by an irritation, or injury to some organ or part of the
body distant from the spinal cord; thus, irritation of the skin, or of
the bowels from the presence of worms, or disease of the bladder or of
the womb, may produce paraplegia.

LOCOMOTOR ATAXIA.

Locomotor ataxia, or creeping palsy, is also called progressive
paralysis. This affection consists of a disease of the nervous matter in
the posterior columns of the spinal cord. It usually affects first the
lower part of the cord, and those portions of the nerve matter that
supply the muscles of the legs. In other cases it first affects the
portions of the spinal cord that supply the arms. In most cases of this
disease there is an early stage in which the patient suffers from
"lightning pains," as they are called. These are of a severe, stabbing,
boring character, very sudden in their onset, and at times so serious as
to have induced suicide. These paroxysms, in the milder form of the
disease, are not so severe, and are readily controlled by anodynes. They
may affect the stomach, and be mistaken for dyspepsia, or the rectum,
and be taken for fissure or piles. At times they affect the bladder,
when the symptoms are not unlike those of stone or cancer. In many cases
we find the patient has been treated for a long period of years for
rheumatism, sciatica, or neuralgia, when the real disease has been this
progressive paralysis in its earlier stage. Sometimes the disease takes
the form of spermatorrhea or impotency; in other cases it is manifested
in weak ey