Abstract
Within the past few years several writers, among them Cabot,1Hall2and Cheney3in this country, and König,4Lomnitz5and others in Europe, have directed attention to operations for supposedly local disease of the abdomen in patients with tabes in whom no disease was found at the laparotomy. Careful search through the literature fails to reveal more than casual reference to the frequency of such blunders. Surgeons performing laparotomies frequently are fully acquainted with this danger, but it is believed that the following study may stimulate still greater caution. In the past five years (1910-1915) over 1,000 cases of tabes dorsalis have been carefully studied in the Cook County Hospital on the neurologic services of Drs. Hall, Grinker, Hassin, Hamill and Kuh. These records have been examined to determine the relative frequency of the cardinal symptoms, the number of patients operated on, the frequency of

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