PERONEAL FORM OF PROGRESSIVE MUSCULAR ATROPHY

Abstract

A controversy has arisen recently between Roussy and Levy on the one hand and Symonds and Shaw on the other, over the classification of two groups of cases which these observers have studied. Roussy and Levy¹ reported the occurrence of a disease in seven members of one family, which was characterized by an acquired bilateral pes cavus, together with total abolition of the tendon reflexes and in some of the cases atrophic weakness of the hands. This, they claim, is a clinical picture hitherto undescribed, and should be regarded as distinct on the one hand from Friedreich's disease, and on the other hand from the socalled peroneal type of progressive muscular atrophy originally described by Charcot and Marie and in the same year by Tooth. Symonds and Shaw,² from a comparison of the details recorded in Roussy and Levy's cases with those found in ten members of a