Charcot's Joints

Abstract

IN A series of lectures delivered at La Salpetriere, Charcot, Professor of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris, discussed the arthropathies of cerebral or spinal origin. He divided these into two types: (1) subacute or acute arthropathies, accompanied by tumefaction, redness, and sometimes by pain, associated with traumatic or inflammatory lesions of the cord, and (2) those associated with locomotor ataxia. Cases of the first type were first reported by an American physician, Mitchell (1831), who observed it in the paraplegia connected with Pott's disease. Allison, in 1846, and afterwards Brown-Sequard, described the arthropathies of paraplegic patients. These conditions were limited to the paralyzed limbs and, because of the anatomic and clinical characteristics cited, were placed by Charcot in the category with those he described in 1862. As nowhere in the voluminous literature on this subject have I found a more concise or comprehensive description of this lesion than that of Charcot'a original article, I...