(1) The average duration of tabes can be placed at from 10 to 20 years.(2) If no other symptoms of tabes can be found, it is an eye lesion.(3) In 1921, Guillain described a reversible form of acute tabetic ataxia that develops abruptly and improves completely on early suitable treatment.(4) The fact that today we do not see the typical tabetic patient so often is no reason to believe that late syphilis has been eliminated.(5) He also contributed to Charcot's classical study of tabes dorsalis published in 1868, which established the differential diagnosis between the arthropathies caused by rheumatoid arthritis and those associated with tabetic lesions.(6) There is a history of syphilis in from seventy-five to ninety per cent of all tabetic cases.(7) Here, we report a young man with rapidly progressive tabetic neurosyphilis admitted to our hospital in October 1999.
