Acute Diffuse (Cerebral and Spinal) Polyradiculoneuritis Following Oral Sepsis

During the past two decades, knowledge of infectious processes that involve the nervous system (not only the central but also the peripheral system) has made prodigious progress. Many new clinical syndromes have emerged; the pathologico-histologic changes underlying them have been described, and entirely new conceptions of etiology have become prevalent. During and since the World War, it gradually became more evident that because of their special characteristics a group of "infectious" polyneuritides must be separated sharply from the general mass of cases of polyneuritis. In England, Holmes,¹in 1917, described some of these cases carefully under the caption "acute febrile polyneuritis." In France, Guillain and Barré,²in 1916, pictured a syndrome (since named the "Guillain-Barré syndrome") of acute radiculoneuritis of the spinal nerves in which there were motor disturbances, loss of tendon and bone reflexes, preservation of cutaneous reflexes, paresthesias, slight objective disturbances of sensibility, pain on pressure