Early accounts of cervical spondylosis  

Abstract

For centuries, physicians did not recognise a degenerative primarily skeletal disorder causing nerve root and cord symptoms. It was variously described by Gowers, Victor Horsley and other as cervical osteoarthritis, spondylitis, chondroma, or herniated disc. Only in the twentieth century was a distinction recognized between nuclear herniation and annular protrusion, and between acute disc protrusions and chronic spondylotic pathology. That they could cause cord damage only became widely recognised when in 1952 Russell Brain, Northfield and Marcia Wilkinson delineated the syndrome of spondylotic myelopathy with consequent neurological signs and symptoms. The progressive natural history was clarified in the same decade.