© The Author (2008). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
Idiopathic narcolepsy: a disease sui generis; with remarks on the mechanisms of sleep. By WJ Adie, MD, FRCP. Physician to Out-patients, the National Hospital, Queen Square, (London). (From a Thesis submitted for the Degree of MD in the University of Edinburgh, on February 26, 1926). Brain 1926: 49; 257–306 and The narcolepsies. By S.A. Kinnier Wilson. Brain 1928: 51; 63–109.
Cambridge
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
‘The disease I am about to describe is characterized by ... attacks of irresistible sleep without apparent cause, and curious attacks on emotion in which the muscles relax suddenly so that the victim sinks to the ground fully conscious but unable to move’. Concerned that the original descriptions of Westphal (1877) and Gélineau (1880) have become confused with all sorts of other sleep disorders, and quoting Sir Clifford Allbutt on ‘sticking a label’ on a new disease entity, Dr Adie (Fig. 1) describes five personal cases and summarizes those reported by Gélineau (1880), Löwenfeld (1902), Redlich (1915), Hennenberg (1916), Jolly (1916), Mendel (1916), Singer (1917), Stöcker (1918), Stiefler (1918), Noack (1918), Somer (1921, two examples) and Goldflam (1924, with two others having uncontrollable sleep but without falling attacks).
| |||||||||||
Mis-diagnosed with petit mal epilepsy at Queen Square, Olive P, aged 14, complains that ‘when I