The cerebellum : its functions, diseases and encephalic interrelations / Charles K. Mills, M.D., LL.D., Emeritus Professor of neurology in the Medical School of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

  • Charles Karsner Mills
Date:
[1928]
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The cerebellum : its functions, diseases and encephalic interrelations / Charles K. Mills, M.D., LL.D., Emeritus Professor of neurology in the Medical School of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    In 1882, I became a visiting member of the staff of the Pennsylvania Training School for Feeble Minded Children at Elwyn. My attention was soon called to a boy known in the school as the “whirling dervish.” A few years after I made my first examination of the boy, he died of what was supposed to be tuberculous meningitis, but unfortunately necropsy was not made. Many, if not most of us, have at times seen a dog or perhaps a cat, engaged in the interesting experiment of pursuing his tail. In doing this it is noticeable that his body assumes a curved or crescentic appear¬ ance, the incurvature being toward the side of the movement. In this effort the animal’s movements become faster and faster. To the ordinary observer such a procedure is probably an object of amusement, but to the student of brain phenomena it calls to mind the labyrinthine mechanism and the medipeduncle of the cerebellum of which the animal seems to be able to make use, not only without any disturbance of his animal mentality and without any physical incon¬ venience, but with a certain amount of pleasure in the sport. The spectacle also calls to mind to one familiar with the literature of the East, the stories of Mohammedan whirling dervishes or fakirs. These dervishes, it is said, pirouette or revolve on one heel used as a pivot. They probably attain great facility in their performances through training from their early childhood to adult life. The whole per¬ formance is after all a cerebrocerebellar one. It is not improbable, although by no means certain, that the Elwyn boy who died of tuberculous meningitis may have had a small tuber¬ culoma in the pons or cerebellar medipenduncle. Tilney and Rjley,4 5 in their book on the “Forms and Functions of the Central Nervous System,” report the case of a boy, 4 years of age. In this case, there was paralysis of the left internal and right external recti muscles of the eyes giving rise to left lateral gaze, which produced a right conjugate deviation. The symptoms in the whirling boy to whom I referred were different, and I refer to the case only because Tilney and Riley found on necropsy a tuberculoma the size of a pea on the right side of the pons as the one lesion to account for the pontocerebellar symptoms. At the meeting of the American Neurological Association of June, 1881, at which I was elected a member, I presented a paper recording a case of tumor of the pons causing conjugate deviation of the eyes and rotation of the head.6 The tumor was situated in the left upper quarter of the pons. It was in the body of the pons the anterior and posterior surfaces of which retained their integrity. 4. Tilney, F., and Riley, H. A.: Forms and Functions of the Central Nervous System, ed. 2, New York, Paul B. Hoeber, 1923, p. 397. 5. Mills, C. K.: Tumor of the Pons Varolii with Conjugate Deviation of the Eyes and Rotation of the Head, J. Nerv. & Ment. Dis. 8:470 (July) 1881.