﻿• THE PHILIPPINE 



Journal of Science 



B. Medical Sciences 



Vol. II OCTOBER, 1907 No. 5 



SOME REMARKS CONCERNING KUBISAGARI OR 

 VERTIGE PARALYSANT. 1 



By KlNNOSTTKE MlUBA. 



{Professor of internal medicine in the Imperial Japanese University at Tokyo.) 



An interesting disease has prevailed for a considerable period of time 

 among the working peasant class of Japan, in the Northern Provinces, 

 especially in the neighborhood of Homori and Iwateken. The principal 

 symptoms consist in a dimness of vision, ptosis, diplopia; difficulty in 

 speech, in deglutition and in mastication, as well as weakness in the 

 muscles of the back of the neck and of the extremities. At a later time 

 the investigations of my assistant, Takemura, demonstrated that this same 

 disease occurs in some villages of Tokushimaken on the Island of Shikoku, 

 but in a less pronounced form. My investigations in the regions men- 

 tioned above, undertaken in the years 1894 and 1895, demonstrated the 

 affection to be identical with endemic paralytic vertigo observed by 

 Gerlier in Ferney, Switzerland. So far as is known to me, no similar 

 reports have come from other parts of the world and therefore I have 

 called your attention to this disease. 



Endemic paralytic vertigo (or kubisagari) has, if I can compare it 

 with a disease known to yon, a great similarity to myasthenia gravis, with 

 this difference, that our disease appears more generally in the summer 

 time in restricted neighborhoods where it is endemic and epidemic, and 

 that the paresis appears simultaneously in various muscular regions. 

 The symptoms are as follows : 



1. Eye s)Tnptoms, namely, ptosis, dimness of vision, diplopia, hyper- 

 emia of the papilla and its surroundings. 



2. Motor disturbances of the tongue, and lips and interference with 

 mastication, more seldom with deglutition. 



3. Paresis of the muscles of the back of the neck and gluteal region. 



1 Read at the Fourth Annual Meeting of the Philippine Islands Medical Associa- 

 tion, Manila. 



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