Familial spastic paralysis, or Strümpell's disease, is a rare heredodegenerative progressive disorder involving mainly the pyramidal tracts in the spinal cord. It is characterized clinically by weakness and rigidity of the lower limbs, with hyperactive and pathologic reflexes. However, as Paskind and Stone1 said: "In a disease of this nature, however, it is hardly to be expected that the lesions should be confined exclusively to the pyramidal tracts; other parts may be and often are involved...." These authors have added reports of cases in forty families, collected from the literature, to the one hundred and eleven family histories gathered by Rhein.2 Jackson,3 in addition to describing a family in which four cases occurred, brought the bibliography up to 1934. In all these studies many types other than the pure familial spastic paralysis have been recorded.
Thus, symptoms implying a circumscribed lateral sclerosis of the cord, a true