The Spino-Cerebellar Degenerations

Abstract

J. G. Greenfield, Honorary Consultant Pathologist to the National Hospital for Diseases of the Nervous System, Queen Square, London, is one of the world's leading neuropathologists. He has written a superb monograph dealing with related degenerations of spinal cord, brain stem, and cerebellum, many of the familial forms of which sometimes have been loosely gathered together under the clinical designation of "Marie's hereditary ataxia." The term spinocerebellar degenerations as used by Greenfield in his monograph includes a group of progressive diseases characterized clinically by disturbances of the coordination of movement, or ataxia, and pathologically by degeneration of those afferent and efferant neuronal systems on which the smooth and efficient regulation of movement depends. He has utilized historical and pathological approaches in his analysis of these conditions, largely ignoring material not pathologically controlled. While the book deals mainly with hereditary disease, there is also a consideration of the idiopathic types of