general paralysis

noun

, Pathology.

1. a syphilitic brain disorder characterized by chronic inflammation and degeneration of cerebral tissue resulting in mental and physical deterioration.

Word History and Origins

Origin of general paralysis¹

First recorded in 1890–95

Example Sentences

No one suggested that my growing social anxiety, my persistent nightmares or my general paralysis in life might have been due to grief.

From Washington Post

Bazar, for example, cites the symptoms of late stage syphilis, or what was then understood as “general paralysis of the insane.”

From Seattle Times

Termed general paralysis of the insane, it was widely supposed by early practitioners to be caused by bad heredity, ‘weak character’ or moral turpitude.

From Nature

That changed in 1913, when Japanese bacteriologist Hideyo Noguchi, working at Rockefeller University in New York City, found traces of Treponema pallidum — the spiral-shaped bacterium responsible for syphilis — in the brains of deceased people with general paralysis.

From Nature

Meanwhile, the discovery that general paralysis was a symptom of a sexually transmitted disease galvanized subsequent generations of psychiatrists.

From Nature