Occasional cases of peripheral origin have been from time to time presented, and go to support in some measure the pathological views of Brown-Séquard. Among observers who have brought forward cases besides those referred to on a previous page are Lande,19 who reported a case of epilepsy dependent upon injury of the right median nerve, and Short,20 in whose case a neuroma explained the cause of the convulsions. Billroth,21 Garnier,22 Brown-Séquard,23 and Raymond24 have brought forward cases where injury of the sciatic nerve was the origin of the trouble, and in more than one instance a cure was effected by excision. It seems strange that a bone dislocation should have anything to do with the genesis of epilepsy, yet in one case reported a severe dislocation at the shoulder-joint explained the appearance of the attacks, and reduction was speedily followed by cure.
19 Mém. et Bull. Soc. de Méd. et Chir. de Bordeaux, 1878, i. 56-65.
20 Med. Essays and Observation Soc., Edin., 1737, iv. 416.
21 Archiv f. klin. Chir., Berlin, 1872, xiii. 379-395.
22 Union médicale de Paris, 1872, 3d S., xiii. 656-658.
23 New York Medical Record, 1872, vii. 472.
24 Rev. méd. de Limoges, 1869-72, iii. 102-105.
I have seen several cases where disease of the internal ear or injury of the temporal bone gave rise to the most obstinate and violent epilepsies. Westmoreland25 and others report such cases, but more often the epilepsy is only symptomatic of pachymeningitis or abscess. Some years ago I presented26 a case of genuine epilepsy in which the seizure was produced at will by irritating the meatus auditorius. By simply blowing into the ear the same effect would be produced. Since then Blake and others have related examples. Quite lately a writer in Brain has collected other cases of this species of auditory epilepsy. A year or so since I examined a patient in whom not only hemi-epilepsy, but other unilateral symptoms, followed erosion of a large part of the mastoid and petrous portion of the temporal bone as the result of a bullet wound.
25 Atlanta Med. and Surg. Journal, 1876-77, xiv. 717-719.
26 New York Medical Record, 1878, xiii. 107-109.