Alcoholic Cerebellar Degeneration

Considerable confusion exists in the classification of diseases of the cerebellum. There are, however, certain syndromes with clearcut clinical and pathologic characteristics. Among these are the heredogenerative diseases of Friedreich and Marie, the progressive familial type of cerebellar degeneration of Holmes, the Dejerine-Thomas olivopontocerebellar atrophy and the intracerebellar atrophies. The intracerebellar atrophies were described by Rossi¹in 1907 and by Marie, Foix and Alajouanine²in 1922. The literature on the subject up to 1933 was collected by Parker and Kernohan.³They were able to find 14 cases in the literature, in 11 of which necropsy studies had been made, and reported 1 case of their own. Additional cases have been reported by Brouwer,⁴Maas and Scherer,⁵Hanon,⁶Kennard⁷and de Haene.⁸The clinical symptoms and pathologic picture in all of the reported cases were strikingly constant. The disease was characterized by a