Menière論文と19世紀の反応

Abstract

Charcot presented two clinical lectures at La Salpêtrière in January, 1874 and in November, 1875. These two lectures are recorded as Lectures No.17 and No.18 in his “Oevrtes complètes de J.-M. Charcot, 1894”. Lecture No.17 presented a female patient suffering from Menière’s vertigo, as Charcot called it. The patient showed a left sanguine-purulent aural discharge and had once been under Menière’s care. At the age of 45, she was admitted to La Salpêtrière for six years due to her constant stage of vertigo accompanied with frequent recurrent attacks, and she was shown as a typical grave case of Menière’s vertigo. All conventional treatments were of little avail. She was again presented next year, this time as a successfully cured case. Charcot had long been aware that final total deafness is almost always accompanied with the ameliorations of both Menière’s vertigo and annoying tinnitus. In Lecture No.18, Charcot suggested that this final stage could be artificially produced in order to relieve the patient from agonizing attacks of vertigo by any manner of means. Quinine sulfate was known to paralyze the auditory nerve (as Charcot so said). Charcot therefore made the serious step of using quinine sulfate. His prescription for the female patient mentioned above was one gram divided in two a day for three months, and the patient was freed from her longstanding misery. Charcot showed similar success in another such case.