Tuberous sclerosis is a relatively rare developmental anomaly of the brain and other organs, characterized clinically by idiocy and epilepsy, and pathologically by multiple sclerotic nodes over the surface of the brain, multiple subependymal tumors, and multiple tumors of the heart, kidneys, skin and other organs.
Though the disease was described by several authors before 1900. von Recklinghausen reporting a case as far back as 1862, the minute histologic alterations and their significance were appreciated first in 1912 when Bundschuh1 and Bielschowsky2 independently gave us very complete and exact studies founded on the embryological concepts laid down by Ranke.3 But little has appeared in English or American literature on the subject, although Campbell4 described it in his work on cerebral sclerosis, and Sailer5 collected twenty-eight cases in 1898. One American writer recently described a case as juvenile multiple sclerosis. It is important that these cases