The knowledge of the nature and symptoms of poliomyelitis has expanded enormously within the last five years. New ideas of the communicability and pathology of the disease have been accepted. Landry's paralysis, polio-encephalitis, and various painful paralyses are now included in one disease-concept. It is therefore with the hope that an unusual symptom-complex of poliomyelitis may find a place in the literature of the disease that I report a case of high cervical poliomyelitis causing a paralysis of the diaphragm and neck muscles and terminating in complete recovery.
The existing literature on this subject is very scanty.
Neck paralysis in combination with loss of power in the extremities is not unusual; on the contrary, isolated neck palsies are excessively rare in poliomyelitis.
Paralysis of the diaphragm is scarcely mentioned in treatises on poliomyelitis except with the fatal type of Landry's paralysis.
There is but one recorded case (Erb's1) of