DEAN SWIFT'S DISEASE. 809 



promised me an oil for my cars, that he has been making for that 

 ailment for somebody else." 



A fit of giddiness, with sickness and ear-disease, is not this laby- 

 rinthine vertigo ? 



On different days in January, 1711, he writes : 



" I had an ugly fit in my chamber last night. . . . My head is not 

 in order, and yet is not absolutely ill ; but giddyish, and makes me 

 listless. . . . One fit shakes me a long time." 



February 1st. "I walked into the City to dine, but I walked 

 plaguy carefully, for fear of sliding against my will." 



April 18th. " I did not go to the House of Commons about the 

 yarn : my head was not well enough. I know not what is the matter. 

 It has never been thus before ; two days together giddy from morn- 

 ing till night, and I totter a little, but can make a shift to walk." 



In May : " I do not totter as I did, but walk firm as a rock, only 

 once or twice for a minute." 



September 1st, he notes an important peculiarity, distinguishing 

 cerebral from stomachic vertigo : " My head is pretty well ; only a 

 sudden turn at any time makes me feel giddy for a moment, and 

 sometimes it feels very stuffed." 



The journals of October show that he distinguished ordinary from 

 vertiginous headache : " My head has ached a little in the evening, 

 but it is not of the true giddy sort, so I do not much value it. ... I 

 had a little turn in my head this morning, which, though it did not 

 last above a minute, yet being of the true sort, has made me as weak 

 as a dog all this day." 



During the years of residence in London which embrace the period 

 of the " Journal to Stella," his other enemy, deafness, is only referred 

 to incidentally, as when he compares it to that of the Lord Treasurer ; 

 but, after his return to Ireland, his deafness becomes sufficiently severe 

 to make him complain. 



In 1720 he writes, " What if I should add that once in five or six 

 weeks I am deaf for three or four days ? " 



In 1724 he writes, " I have been this month past so pestered with 

 a return of the noise and deafness in my ears that I had not the spirit 

 to perform the common offices of life." Subsequently, in the same 

 year, "My deafness has left me above three weeks, and therefore I 

 expect a visit from it soon." It was evidently periodic and paroxys- 

 mal, like the giddiness. 



He complains in another letter of an old vexatious disorder of a 

 deafness and noise in the ears. In 1727, in a letter to Sheridan, he 

 says that his deafness is worse than it ever before had been, and that 

 it is accompanied by giddiness and tottering. " I believe," says he, 

 " that this giddiness is the disorder which will at last get the better of 

 me." And again, " I walk like a drunken man, and am deafer than 

 ever you knew me." 



