Unilateral hallucinations : their relative frequency, associations, and pathology / by Alex. Robertson, M.D.

  • Robertson, Alexander, M.D.
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Unilateral hallucinations : their relative frequency, associations, and pathology / by Alex. Robertson, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    to some extent in one patient who saw the hallucinatory objects much more distinctly with the right than the left eye. The objects seen in this case were of different colours— black, blue, and red being particularly mentioned. There was no apparent difference in the ordinary visual power of the two eyes when they were subjected to examination. With respect to the causation of the unilateral cases, in 3 the mental disorder was clearly and immediately due to alcohol; and in 2 of the other 3 the patients had been previously of drunken habits. These 6 cases are recorded in detail in the paper referred to, but as they have been already published, I shall merely mention that their features correspond to those in cases that have since come under my care, some of which will now be described, though mostly in more condensed form. Case i.—J. W—, set. 36. This man was an inmate of the Town's Hospital. He told me on admission, which was in 1877, that about eight years previously, while undergoing a sentence of imprisonment for theft, after about a year's solitary confinement he began to hear voices, though alone in the cell. They varied greatly, were some- times loud, at other times like a whisper, and seemed to him to resemble the voices both of men and women whom he had known. They have troubled him to a greater or less extent since that time. They have always been in the right ear, and patient is sure that he has never heard them in the left one. He mentioned of his own accord, and without any suggestive questions, that he had been in the habit of putting cotton into the right ear, which he believed had occasionally put them away altogether, although it had often little or no effect in modifying their intensity. At times he was disposed to think these voices real, though very generally, as when he was conversing with me, he knew them to be imaginary. The actual hearing power of both ears was ascertained to be equal and unimpaired. He had also visual hallucinations. I imagine, to use his own words, I see both men and women, particularly with the right eye, and sometimes almost fancy them to be real. He said that they were of different colours, and appeared most frequently at dusk, addmg that he saw them when the eyes were shut as well as when open. Case 2.—J. M—, set. 48. This man was found guilty of havmg murdered his wife, and was sentenced to death. Grave doubt, however, having been felt as to his complete soundness of mmd, an after inquiry was instituted, as a result of which his sentence was commuted to imprisonment in the Scottish Criminal Lunatic Asylum at Perth. He suffered from a form of alcoholic insanity, and Dr. (now Professor) Wm. Macewen directed my attention to the fact that the imaginary voices which troubled him and prompted the criminal act were said by the prisoner always to be in the left ear. Beyond confirming this fact I am unable to give further details ot the case.