Affections of the cranial nerves are of especial interest in the diagnosis of syphilis of the central nervous system. Little attention, however, has been paid to abnormal dental sensation in this disease. A few such cases have been reported: Oppenheim1 cites one case of degeneration of the gasserian ganglion and the dental nerve fibers. Misch2 has stated that pain loss in manipulation and especially in extraction of the teeth should direct suspicion to tabes dorsalis. He quotes Kaposi and Port,3 Merkle4 and Kronfeld5 as stating that decrease in pain sense in the tooth pulp may be taken as an early symptom of this disease. Prinz6 has called our attention to a number of apparently normal patients in whom he found abnormal dental sensation, who later developed typical signs and symptoms of tabes dorsalis.
Thus far twenty-four cases of advanced tabes dorsalis and eight cases