THE PRESENCE of scoliosis, or curvature of the spine, must always suggest the possibility of disease of the spinal cord, often correctable.
Traditionally, scoliosis, which is usually thought of as an orthopedic problem, is looked on as related to a disease of bone and muscle alone or to irreparable or unidentifiable disease which has afflicted the central nervous system, or as being idiopathic. It is generally recognized that a patient with disease of the spinal cord may have, among other things, scoliosis or that scoliosis may, in fact, be of such degree that it itself damages the cord. Not sufficiently prominent in the common consideration of clinicians, however, is the fact that scoliosis may be the earliest sign of disease of the spinal cord, or the first sufficiently recognized to bring the patient to the physician; that it may indicate the presence of a process which may be retarded, halted