Clinical lectures on important symptoms. On giddiness / by Thomas Grainger Stewart.

  • Stewart Thomas Grainger, Sir, 1837-1900.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Clinical lectures on important symptoms. On giddiness / by Thomas Grainger Stewart. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    Sometimes the contradictoriness is due to external condi- tions. This is especially true regarding sight. If you visit the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa, you will most likely experience, as you ascend and descend its stair, a peculiar, uneasy feeling of slight giddiness. On experiencing this sensation, it occurred to me that it was probably due to contradictoriness of impressions derived from sight and from the other sources of impression guiding equilibriation ; and I found that it was so, for, by sHghtly altering my attitude, the feeling at once disappeared. In the tower there were three others along with me, all of whom felt the same uneasiness, and all were freed from it by altering their posture very shghtly, I am satisfied from what I saw when there, and from what I have heard since, that that peculiar giddiness is felt by very many people. Some of you may have visited, and many of you will hereafter visit, the famous tower. When you do so, you will be able to verify what I have told you. But you have all had opportunity of observing another variety of the feeling—what we may term cliff or tower giddi- ness, A large proportion of people suffer more or less from an uneasy feeling of giddiness whenever they stand upon a tower or a cliff, or even a steep stair or a hillside. It is due, I take it, to contradictoriness of impressions. They have been accustomed, under ordinary conditions, to receive simul- taneously impressions from the plantar surfaces, from the muscular, articular, visceral, and labyrinthine structures, with visual impressions of solid ground before them ; but when standing on a tower or cliff they find the visual impressions contradicting the others, and so the peculiar feeling arises. The liability to this kind of giddiness varies in different indi- viduals, and is determined by the sensitiveness of the nervous system, on the one hand, and by the degree in which the individual has been accustomed to trust to visual impressions for equilibriation, on the other. You will find the feeling aggravated if you look downwards to where, according to experience, the solid ground should be, and absent or dimin- ished if you look in other directions. Some people are so sensitive in this respect that they cannot with comfort sit in