The Uruguayan physician Francisco Soca, who specialized in neurology in Jean-Martin Charcot’s clinic, defended a thesis at the Paris Faculty of Medicine in 1888 on Friedreich's ataxia in eleven patients. In this work he described the presence of toe phenomenon.
In the late 1800s Soca completed a specialization in neurology at the service run by Charcot in Paris. He defended an important thesis in 1888 assessing data from 11 Friedreich’s ataxia. In his thesis, Soca also described the toe phenomenon and the presence of structural changes in the feet of these patients that were not described in the Friedreich study published in 1863. The Soca’s thesis contained the description of toe extension associated with pyramidal tract lesions, eight years later described and further immortalized as Babiński's sign. Therefore, Soca had already publicized this sign as being representative of a pyramidal dysfunction before Babiński or any other neurologist.
Wednesday, July 14, 2021
Would Francisco Soca have been the first to relate toe phenomenon as pyramidal disorders?
élio A.G. Teive, Carlos Henrique F. Camargo, Nicolás Sommaruga, Héctor Ignacio Amorin-Costábile, Olivier Walusinski; Journal of Clinical Neuroscience, Volume 91, 2021, Pages 172-175, doi:10.1016/j.jocn.2021.07.013.
