I
Progressive muscular atrophy seems to subdivide into secondary groups, which increase in number as clinical observation becomes more attentive and more precise.The form of muscular atrophy that constitutes the subject of this work seems to present characteristics sufficiently definite and stable to merit a special description and a place of its own in nosology.During the past year, we had occasion to observe five patients with this affliction. It is from their symptoms that we shall describe the disease. We shall also have recourse, when necessary, to analogous observations published by other authors[Five case reports follow.]
II
Now we can try to assemble all the information furnished by these five cases and group them and coordinate them so that a nosologie description emerges containing the main traits of the clinical picture, always so similar in each case. These are the essential points that, in our opinion, distinguish this form of muscular atrophy: