The borderland of epilepsy : faints, vagal attacks, vertigo, migraine, sleep symptoms and their treatment.

  • Gowers, W. R. (William Richard), 1845-1915.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The borderland of epilepsy : faints, vagal attacks, vertigo, migraine, sleep symptoms and their treatment. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    THE BORDER-LAND OF EPILEPSY. CHAPTER I. FAINTS AND FAINTING. A genuine faint bears a close superficial re- semblance to an attack of minor epilepsy, and hence cardiac syncope is a convenient starting-place for a survey of the borderland of epilepsy. The resemblance often entails a difficulty in diagnosis, and even involves problems regarding this nature of the two conditions, a consideration of which is instructive. Familiar as fainting is, adequately as we seem to know it, there is much in it that we do not know. Our know- ledge is enough to obscure our ignorance. The most obtrusive feature of complete cardiac syncope is the loss of consciousness which results, evidently due to the failure of the action of the heart which precedes and attends it. But the loss cannot be the direct effect of the cardiac failure, because consciousness is not the result of the circulation of the blood. To say this is to state an obvious truism, for the two are totally different in nature. The loss must be immediately due to a state of the nerve elements of the brain produced by the change in the circulation. We are apt to overlook this when we think of the process of fainting, but its recognition is of great