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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    years ago his right leg was amputated immediately below the knee, on account of an injury received in a railway accident. Since his admis- sion into the asylum he has frequently complained of starting or burning feelings in the stump, which seems quite healthy. These are described occasionally as like a flame of fire, and are said to extend upwards to the body. He further states that the blessed Virgin, angels, and men go in at the stump, but sometimes the visitors are devils. They usually tell their names when they enter. They go up to the throat, and generally make their exit there, but now and again they return and leave the body through the stump. This occurs both day and night, but most frequently during the day. There is no peculiar sensation or more defined delusional idea associated with general sensibility in any other part of his body. In this case there was generalised insanity; but the one- sided character of the hallucinations (illusions?), and their association with the stump, indicated that the' mutilated limb, possibly the condition of its nerves, had at least exer- cised a modifying influence on these hallucinations. Further, in the great department of sensation, and -some- times strictly limited to it, we meet with disorder and occa- sionally complete obliteration of function. This may be of organic origin, and due to lesion of the posterior part of the internal capsule. But the purest cases, which are also better analogues of one-sided hallucinations, are met with in hysteria. Patients have been under my care in whom there was com- plete abeyance of sensation in its various forms—touch, pain, heat, cold, muscular sense ; inclusive also of the special'senses of sight, hearing, smell, and taste—defects which were con- fined to one side of the body. Cases of this kind are by no means uncommon, and it is unnecessary to submit their his- tories in detail. The question arises, is there, in disorders of general sen- sation, any degree of parallelism to the extension of hallucina- tions from one sense to another, on the same side, or from the one side to the other side, such as occurred in some of the cases recorded in this paper? In simpler form there appears to be a correspondence in the irradiation of morbid sen- sation from one nerve to another. Thus a decayed tooth occasionally gives rise to a severe supra-orbital neuralgia, and a diseased hip-joint may disclose itself chiefly by pain in the knee. In these cases the extension is on the same side, but it may be to the other side. In illustration may be mentioned that the smart pinch of an anaesthetic limb has