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Previous Volume 335:1075 October 3, 1996 Number 14 Next

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

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By J. van Gijn. 176 pp. Utrecht, Heidelberglaan, the Netherlands, Universiteit Utrecht, 1996. $49.95. ISBN 90-9008908-X.

Have you ever seen a crowd of medical students and house officers watching intently as the professor repeatedly strokes the sole of a patient's foot, trying to decide whether the great toe goes up, down, or nowhere? Is the Babinski sign present? If not, should we flick the toes, squeeze the gastrocnemius muscles, scratch the dorsum of the foot, massage the anterior surface of the tibia, or do something else to evoke one of the myriad variations of the Babinski sign? My own teacher, Houston Merritt, dismissed the mutants with a simple response: "I have a hard enough time telling . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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