Tabes Dorsalis

Tabes dorsalis attacks the nerve pathways responsible for movement and balance. What was once self-evident — walking, standing, sensing one's own body in space — becomes uncertain, unsteady, eventually impossible. The legs no longer obey. The ground beneath the feet grows unfamiliar. Medically, tabes dorsalis is a late complication of syphilis in which the posterior columns of the spinal cord degenerate. The nerve pathways that report to the brain where the body is located dissolve.

But behind the physical event lies a question that reaches deeper than any nerve pathway: What happens to a person whose thinking has grown so rigid that it literally paralyzes them? Whose inner immobility finally shows itself in the body — as the loss of outward mobility?

Tabes dorsalis is not an ordinary loss of movement, but the body's answer to a consciousness that has walled itself in.