RARE clinical syndromes go through cyclic periods of familiarity to physicians. When once they have been described by an alert observer, examples are reported by others, a group of papers is published and the syndrome becomes for a time so well known and almost commonplace that further papers cease for a time to appear. Then a new generation of physicians grows up, so occupied with current medical journals as to have little time for the older literature, and the syndrome is temporarily forgotten, only to be rediscovered and redescribed.
Such a syndrome is the laryngeal manifestations of tabes dorsalis. Known for nearly a century to exist, they are still so unfamiliar to most neurologists and laryngologists as to justify a review of the literature and the report of an additional series of cases.
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
Clinical Aspects.—The first description of tabetic involvement of the larynx is attributed