Cerebellum and coördination. Pressure on adjacent parts renders
results uncertain. Generic symptoms, ataxia, titubation. Marked
symptoms with rapid morbid progress. Treatment: tonic, hygienic.
Whatever functions are exercised by the cerebellum there is no doubt of
its control over muscular coördination. It is quite true that disease of
any other part of the brain causing effusion, exudation or intracranial
pressure will more or less completely arrest the functions of the
cerebellum just as disease of the cerebellum producing intracranial
pressure will derange the functions of other parts of the encephalon.
The general symptoms produced in this way cannot therefore be accepted
as indicating the precise localization of an intracranial disease.
Dullness, stupor, coma, dilated pupils, choked discs, optic neuritis,
and vomiting, are in this sense generic symptoms, which may in the
absence of fever indicate dropsy, exudation, apoplexy, tumor, concussion
or other lesion, and with hyperthermia may indicate encephalitis or
meningitis. But if in the absence of these symptoms and of aural disease
there should appear ataxia, swaying unsteady gait, and staggering, there
is a strong presumption of cerebellar disease. This may also be
manifested by the other and generic symptoms already mentioned only the
diagnosis is not then so certain. Again cerebellar disease may exist
without the ataxia and lack of balance, but probably only in cases in
which the progress is slow and the organ has had ample time to
accommodate itself to the as yet comparatively restricted lesions. The
result may be a mere defect of muscular tone, or it may extend to an
almost absolute loss of contractility, or it may be of any intermediate
grade.
_Treatment_, which is eminently unsatisfactory, consists in improving
the general health and tone, by corroborant medicines and conditions of
life, and training the muscles by carefully graduated exercise and even
electricity.