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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    In vagal attacks the symptoms, respiratory and cardiac, which are gone as soon as felt in a true epileptic seizure, seem to be most distressing when prolonged. This can readily be conceived. Full perception is not momentary, and with time there seems to be what physiologists term a summation of sensation, even of that which is purely subjective. These facts suggest that if we can conceive a minor epileptic attack that is extended, its elements protracted with no tendency to be terminated by loss of conscious- ness, its features would be so different that its nature would not be suspected. Velocity altogether alters the effect of momentum. A bullet fired from a rifle makes a round hole in a pane of glass, which it would smash if thrown against it. Swiftness is an essential element of ordinary epilepsy, but this does not preclude the possibility of deliberation. The attack to be described was, of course, hysterical. Yet it should be noted that the patient had never had, throughout her life, any hysterical attack of the usual type of such seizures, nor has she manifested any of the ordinary hysterical symptoms. She had suffered from attacks bearing a close resemblance to those of epilepsy. In whatever category the seizure here described is placed, its features deserve consideration not least because an intense conviction of impending death was associated with no special distress to explain it. The patient was a married woman, aged 35 years, with a nervous system unstable and excitable in a high degree, such as to suggest any kind of hysterical disturbance. She was apprehensive of evil to an extent that made her life distressing to herself and perplexing to others. In childhood she had some attacks that seemed to be definite petit mal, with loss of consciousness so sudden as to cause her to fall in each. They ceased after childhood, but there 3