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

  • Gowers, W. R. (William Richard), 1845-1915.
Date:
1907
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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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    times after hysteroid convulsion, sometimes independently. Among the latter are cases in which the sleep attacks endured for hours, days, or weeks, and this condition was apparently such as in England has been termed trance. To this, and also to post-convulsive sleep, the term is certainly inapplicable. This brings before us another source of confusion—the danger of mistaking attacks of minor epilepsy for true sleep attacks. A patient with minor epilepsy, and some- times with attacks that are more severe, who is aware of the commencing loss of consciousness, often describes his sensation as that of going to sleep. But this is no evidence of the nature of the attack. It is common in unquestionable epilepsy. A recent writer on narcolepsy. Friedmann, described fifteen personally observed cases. From my own experience I should say that, on an average, before fifteen cases of narcolepsy were met with, 30,000 cases of epilepsy would come under observation ! Most of the cases were probably minor epilepsy. This is supported by the statement that the usual duration of the attack was fifteen to twenty seconds, and that conscious- ness was often not completely lost. Attacks to which the term narcolepsy is strictly applicable are thus very rare, and it is important that its use should be restricted to the cases in which definite brief sleep interrupts a normal state. It should not be applied to the cases in which a sleep state is interrupted only when the sufferer is roused. The discarded term somnosis emphasises the distinction from true narcolepsy. Treatment.—The varied sleep symptoms differ much in their amenability to treatment. From the meagre facts regarding true narcolepsy that are at present avail-