526 



SCIENCE, 



[Vol. IX., No. 226 



these reasons that physicians have made a study 

 of sea-sickness, and have in various publications 

 given the results of their investigations to the 

 world. 



In Quain's ' Dictionary of medicine ' sea-sick- 

 ness is defined as a peculiar functional disturbance 

 of the nervous system, produced by shock, re- 

 sulting from the motion of a ship. The most 

 prominent symptoms are a state of general de- 

 pression, giddiness, vomiting, and derangement of 

 the bowels and of the urinary secretion. Dr. B. 

 W. Eichardson, in his ' Field of disease,' says that 

 the phenomena of sea-sickness may be placed 

 under the same head, in regard to cause, as con- 

 cussions experienced by iron-plate workers who 

 are employed in riveting, or by travellers on rail- 

 roads. In sea-sickness the effect of the motion 

 of the vessel is to produce a series of shocks to the 

 ganglionic or organic as well as to the cerebro- 

 spinal system. In some persons the organic 

 nervous system is chiefly affected, and they suffer 

 from vomiting and loss of appetite, and may re- 

 main prostrated for many weeks, and in one in- 

 stance the sickness was never entirely recovered 

 from during a comparatively long life ; in others 

 the shock tells most upon the brain and spinal 

 cord. Such cases are less troubled with vomit- 

 ing, but are oppressed with headache, giddiness, 

 and inability to stand upright or move with steadi- 

 ness. After they have completed the voyage, 

 these persons suffer still from unsteadiness in 

 walking, feeling, as they express it, the move- 

 ments of the vessel. A repeated series of concus- 

 sions, as it were, affected the brain so as to leave 

 an impression of a wave-like motion, which does 

 not subside until after a considerable length of 

 time. 



Various other theories have been held in regard 

 to the causation of sea-sickness. Wollaston, who 

 wrote on the subject in 1810, considered it due to 

 sanguine congestion of the brain brought on by a 

 deranged centre of gravity during the pitching 

 forward of the vessel ; Barru believed it to be 

 owing to irritation of the optic nerves caused by 

 the apparent vacillation of every thing around the 

 vessel ; Pellarin accounted for it by sanguine de- 

 pletion in the brain caused by a centrifugal force 

 called into action within the blood-vessels in con- 

 sequence of the oscillation of the ship. In more 

 ancient times Plutarch treated of the subject, and 

 attributed sea-sickness to the smell of the sea and 

 the fears of the patient. 



Among those who have written treatises on the 

 subject, we mention Dr. John Chapman as one 

 whose treatment has been measurably successful. 

 This writer gives it as his opinion that the main 

 proximate cause of the affection is an undue 



amount of blood in the spinal nervous centres, and 

 especially in those parts of them directly related 

 to the stomach and the muscles concerned, in vom- 

 iting. The result of this hyperaemia is that the 

 nerves emanating from the affected nervous 

 centres partake of the undue activity of the 

 centres themselves, and convey to their ultimate 

 distributions an excessive amount of nervous im- 

 pulses, which have the effect of disturbing the 

 ordinary action of the organs supplied. 



It will be seen from this brief consideration that 

 there are many and various theories in regard to 

 the causation of sea-sickness, and the number 

 might be increased did space permit. As would 

 naturally be expected, the methods of treatment 

 are also various. Dr. Chapman recommended the 

 application of ice, contained in rubber bags, to 

 the spine, with the idea of overcoming the hyper- 

 aemic condition of the spinal cord, which he be- 

 lieved to be the cause of the symptoms. Some 

 twenty years ago this plan of treatment was 

 adopted by a considerable number of individuals, 

 and remarkably favorable results were reported. 

 Travellers crossing the Channel and making sea- 

 voyages, who had previously suffered severely 

 from sea- sickness, were by means of the ice-bag 

 enabled to make their journeys with comfort, and 

 freedom from sickness. In recent years w^e have 

 heard but little of the ice-bags. Whether this 

 is to be accounted for on the ground that on a 

 fuller trial they failed to accomplish all that 

 was claimed and expected, or w^hether the diffi- 

 culty connected with their use was too great for 

 them ever to come into general use, we do not 

 know. In a recent letter to a daily paper a cor- 

 respondent states that he has made twenty-six 

 trips, or fifty-two tours, across the Atlantic, and 

 has in every instance, except the last, suffered 

 very much from sea-sickness. On this last trip 

 he had with him a rubber bag, twelve inches long 

 and four inches wide, the mouth of which was 

 closed by an iron clamp. This he filled with 

 small pieces of ice and applied to the spine at the 

 base of the brain for half to three-quarters of an 

 hour every morning. It had a most soothing ef- 

 fect, and he enjoyed every hour and every meal. 



In a recent number of the Boston medical and 

 surgical journal is a letter from William James 

 of Harvard college, in which he says that whilst 

 studying the feeling of dizziness, he was led to 

 discover the singular immunity from it which 

 deaf-mutes, as a class, possess, and he attributes 

 this to the destruction either of the auditory 

 nerves or of their labyrinthian termination. He 

 found also in deaf-mutes what seemed signs of a 

 possible immunity from sea-sickness, and ven- 

 tured the suggestion that the semicircular canals 



