The subject of this clinical and literary study is a discussion of some of the diagnostically most important reflexes from a practical neurologic standpoint. It deals with their history, physiology, technic of elicitation, synthesis and nomenclature, with emphasis on the synthesis of the existing reflexes and the simplification of their nomenclature.
In 1927, a leading Polish neurologist,1 in an abstract of a Russian article on reflexes, said:
In any event, in view of the wealth of reflexes to be elicited from the soles of the feet, which in summer are usually dirty, the practitioner should be extremely grateful to the neurologist who would contribute something concrete to the unification and understanding of the physiogenesis of these reflexes; he would thus spare the clinician the necessity of examination for most of them.
On the same page, a German neurologist,2 in discussing a Polish study on reflexes stated:
... It is