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This article needs more reliable medical references for verification or relies too heavily on primary sources. Please review the contents of the article and add the appropriate references if you can. Unsourced or poorly sourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Locomotor ataxia" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (June 2019)

Locomotor ataxia is the inability to precisely control one's own bodily movements.

Disease

People afflicted with this disease may walk in a jerky, non-fluid manner. They will not know where their arms and legs are without looking (i.e., a failure of proprioception), but can, for instance, feel and locate a hot object placed against their feet. It is often a symptom of tabes dorsalis, which is a key finding in tertiary syphilis.

It is caused by degeneration of the posterior (dorsal) white column of the spinal cord.

In popular culture

The chilling effects of this condition and its connection to venereal disease are dramatized in the story "Love O' Women" by Rudyard Kipling.

Bram Stoker's death certificate named the cause of death as "Locomotor Ataxia 6 months", presumed to be a reference to syphilis.

References

1. Denslow, Legrand N. (1909). "I. The Surgical Treatment of Locomotor Ataxia". Annals of Surgery. 49 (6): 737–750. doi:10.1097/00000658-190906000-00001. PMC 1407127. PMID 17862352.
2. Davison, Carol Margaret (November 1, 1997). Bram Stoker's Dracula: Sucking Through the Century, 1897-1997. Dundurn. ISBN 9781554881055 – via Google Books.

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