Friedreichs ataxia is a hereditary disease resembling loco-motor ataxia and due to degenerative changes in nerves of the spinal cord and the brain. It usually occurs before the twentieth years of life and often affects several siblings. Its chief symptoms are a unsteady gait, loss of knee jerks, difficulties of speech, trembling hands, head and eyes, deformity of the feet and curvature of the spine. The sufferer may live twenty or thirty years helpless and steadily getting worse.