Accidental poisoning with deadly nightshade berries: a case report.

A case of acute accidental poisoning with deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna) berries is reported. The patient was an elderly but healthy man who soon recovered. On the one hand, the clinical picture looked similar to that of delirium tremens; on the other, there were myoclonic jerks and signs of extrapyramidal involvement to suggest the onset of subacute dementia. The electroencephalogram findings confirmed those already reported during experimentally induced intoxication after ingestion of atropine in man.

"Thalamic" dementia in herpes encephalitis: clinico-pathological report.

Herpes zoster (HZ) primary affections of the CNS are rare and, in most of the reported patients, are representing variously extended forms of ascending myelitis. Our examination concerns a man who at the age of 37 developed apathy after a feverish episode with iridocyclitis. Six months later an ophthalmic HZ was diagnosed and thenceforth the patient showed a dementia with Korsakow's syndrome, apathy and a right hemipalsy, and diplopia appeared; the later symptoms remitted after steroid therapy. Post-mortem examination revealed a slowly progressive encephalitis with symmetrical impairment of the anterior ventral, medial, and centrum medianum of the thalamus. The HZ origin of the lesions and the relation between their site and the peculiar form of dementia, to be ascribed to the "thalamic" ones, are discussed. A vasculitis process can be hypothesized considering both the symmetrical localisation and the microscopical aspects of the lesions.