During the last fifty years, as a result of continuous study of the physiology and pathology of the spinal cord, the clinical diagnosis of intravertebral tumor has been made with increasing frequency. Many case reports are now available. From these it would appear that growths within the spine occur exceptionally in childhood, differing in this respect from those within the cranium. Stursberg1 collected from the literature reports of 141 operations; one patient was under 10 years, and only six were between the ages of 10 and 15. Schultze,2 in his series, introduced but one case, a girl of 4 years, while the age of the youngest in Nonne's3 latest report of sixteen operations was 19 years. The occurrence of these tumors in early life was not noted in Flatau's4 recent monograph.
Postmortem statistics differ from these very occasional findings in the clinic. Among 251 collected reports