The complications of tabes are both numerous and varied. They may involve any of the viscera, the nervous system, or the circulatory apparatus; they may extend into the province of the surgeon or the orthopedist. Many organic diseases, as well as many mental conditions, may occur in conjunction with tabes. These facts will seem neither unusual nor strange if one reflects that tabes extends over a long period of time, during the greater part of which it is progressive. Another and more potent reason still is the fact that tabes is specific in etiology. The complications of tabes, numerous and varied as they are, are yet, preeminently, the complications of syphilis.
The most extensive and all-embracing group of complications are the crises. Of all these the one most frequently encountered is the crisis of pain. It occurs in 88 per cent, of the cases. It may involve trunk, limbs or