Oculopharyngeal Muscular Dystrophy

IN 1915 Professor E. W. Taylor1 called attention to an unusual familial form of dysphagia with ptosis of the eyelids. These symptoms were slowly progressive, leading eventually to death by starvation. Taylor contended, after the customary search of the medical literature, that the disease had not previously been described and that the constancy of the clinical picture "justifies its classification as a clinical entity." Even a cursory survey of earlier neurologic writings uncovers the fact that Taylor was not the first to note the familial occurrence of a restricted paralysis of cranial muscles. As early as 1879 Hutchinson2 had written . . .