sexual contact with an individual with syphilis is important. Prognosis Left untreated, tabes dorsalis can lead to paralysis, dementia, and blindness. Existing nerve damage cannot be reversed. Epidemiology The disease is more frequent in males than in females. Onset is commonly during mid-life. The incidence of tabes dorsalis is rising, in part due to co-associated HIV infection. History Although there were earlier clinical accounts of this disease, and descriptions and illustrations of the posterior columns of the spinal cord, it was the Berlin neurologist Romberg whose account became the classical textbook description, first published in German and later translated into English. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, completed his doctorate on tabes dorsalis in 1885. Notable patients German storywriter E.T.A. Hoffmann appears to have had and died from tabes dorsalis. The French novelist Alphonse Daudet kept a journal of the pain he experienced from this condition which was posthumously published as La Doulou (1930) and translated into English as In the Land of Pain (2002) by Julian Barnes. Poet Charles Baudelaire contracted syphilis in 1839 and resorted to opium to help alleviate the pain of tabes dorsalis ascending his spine. Painter Édouard Manet died of syphilis complications, including tabes dorsalis, in 1883, aged 51. Boxer Charley Mitchell Meyer Nudelman, the father of author and doctor Sherwin Nuland, who described his father's condition extensively in his book Lost in America; A Journey with my Father (2003). See also General paresis of the insane :Category:Deaths from tabes dorsalis References 'An Essay Upon the Vasomotor Changes in Tabes Dorsalis' by Arthur Conan Doyle External links Pain Histopathology Neurodegenerative disorders Syphilis