Clinical lectures on important symptoms. On giddiness / by Thomas Grainger Stewart.

  • Stewart Thomas Grainger, Sir, 1837-1900.
Date:
1884
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Clinical lectures on important symptoms. On giddiness / by Thomas Grainger Stewart. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    frequent journeys he had constantly to avail himself of stratagems of war, so as to be prepared under any circum- stances to get assistance. On entering theatres and churches a similar uneasiness occurred at one time; but that difficulty disapjDeared. He could sail without much discomfort in a large vessel; not in a small boat; and could only walk at the sea-side in places where the houses come close to the shore. He lived in constant dread of these uneasy feelings. He described them as diifering from giddiness and from the feehng experienced when looking from a tower. He benefited by moderate use of alcoholic stimulants. The disease began in his twenty-seventh year. The nervous system was not otherwise abnormal ; but there was a sHght want of symmetry of the two halves of the body. There was no marked history of nervous disease in his family. In this patient it will be observed that there was abundant evidence of the peculiarity of the nervous organisation, but the point to which I wish to draw your attention is the inability to walk across an open square, and the pecuHar sensation experienced by the patient. Benedikt speaks of the sensation as giddiness, and although Westphal has drawn a distinction, as this patient did, between ordinary giddiness and this special uneasiness, I think we are warranted in believing that the feehngs are closely allied. Various explanations of the condition have been attempted, but none of them seems to be quite satisfactory. A reasonable explanation of one element of the trouble lies, I think, in the supposition that these patients, with the nervous system morbidly sensitive, have from some pecu- liarity, acquired the habit of guiding themselves in their equilibriation by reference to near vertical lines ; and that, when these vertical lines are awanting, they feel as others do when standing on the edge of a cliff. Notice the fact about the methods they devise for getting across squares. If they can get behind some vehicle, they can wallt well enough ; the vertical line of the vehicle suffices to guide them. I have met with one case of another condition allied to these. I know a lady who experiences great discomfort if she sits in a building with a lofty ceiling. She always