On the relation of the 'aura' giddiness to epileptic seizures / by Charles E. Beevor.

  • Beevor, Charles, E. (Charles Edward), 1854-1908.
Date:
[1884?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the relation of the 'aura' giddiness to epileptic seizures / by Charles E. Beevor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    8/10 (page 494)
    Whatever may be the explanation of these two cases, and what bearing they may have on the subject of this paper, I have mentioned them for their great interest, and with the hope that they might support the cases mentioned in this paper. The difficulty is increased by the fact, that in the man the apparent movements of external objects occurred with the rapid jerks of the eyes, and in the woman they occurred with the slower movements of her eyes and not with the rapid jerks. Now in e])ilepsy one of the most marked motor symptoms at the beginning of a fit is the conjugate rotation of the eyes and head towards one side, and this side—right or left—is the one on which the patient is subsequently in the clonic stage the more convulsed. It is, therefore, rather remarkable, I think, that so many of the cases in this paper—twelve out of seven- teen—have felt themselves and the room to go round in the same direction as that in which their eyes and head have been seen to turn as the fit began. In fact, these cases seem to agree with Dr. Hughlings-Jackson’s first case, concerning which, to use Dr. Jackson’s own words, “some of his friends told him that the eyes ‘ could not ’ have been moving in the same direc- tion towards which the objects were displaced, and that he must have observed wrongly.” I had hoped that the cases I have seen might help to confirm what Dr. Jackson described in his two patients, or perhaps only in the case of the man. If the statements made by these patients and their friends are true, that in the majority of the cases the apparent move- ment of the patient and his surroundings is in the same direction as the initial spasm, it is very difficult to explain why this should be so, and I cannot pretend to be able to give an explanation. I cannot see why there should be any reason to presuppose that objects ought to move in the contrary direction to the patient’s head and eyes, or why he ought to feel himself going in the opposite direction in which the room seems to go. Our common ideas of giddiness can be produced by prolonged movements of ourselves or of objects before our eyes, and it seems to me that they are different to the feelings of giddiness before epilepsy which are of central origin. To take two examples of induced giddiness: If one turn