SOCIETY MEETINGS. 
135 
Meniere's Disease (Ivabyriiitli Vertigo).—This disease I be¬ 
lieve to be a most important one from a medical and legal point 
of view in an examination for soundness, for, as far as I am 
aware, there are no symptoms by which it may be detected 
unless the animal should be seized with vertigo while being 
• • • ^ ^ 
examined, which would be improbable. That this disease oc¬ 
curs in our patients very frequently I firmly believe, and also 
that many of us make an error in diagnosis by calling it me¬ 
grims, or staggers, and account for it by a refiex action from the 
intestinal tract, but surely if errors in diet were always the cause 
megrims would be far more common with ns than it is. What 
brought this disease prominently to my notice was the fact that 
I unwittingly purchased an animal affected with it for my own 
use, and which afterwards showed all the symptoms of this dis¬ 
ease as manifested in the human being. If yon will pardon me 
for a few moments, I will give you the symptoms of this par¬ 
ticular case, as I had an opportunity to hold a post-mortem on 
it, for the animal kindly committed suicide while in my posses¬ 
sion. 
After I had purchased the animal, I asked the owner if he 
had any bad habits. He said no, except that he had ‘‘ a bee in 
his bonnet.” I drove him for awhile, and one dav while 
climbing a hill at a walk, he suddenly jumped to the right side 
and shook his head as if a wasp were in his left ear, staggered 
and would have fallen if I had not jumped to his head. When 
I went to put my hand up towards his ear it seemed as if his 
vision was distorted, for he shrank away as if he expected to get 
hit; the conjunctiva were highly injected. In about fifteen min¬ 
utes he was able to stand without help, and in half an hour fit 
to be driven. I tried dieting, bleeding, ph^^sic—bringing no re¬ 
sults. On post-mortem I found the Eustachian tube on the left 
side greatly reduced in size, as was also the guttural pouch and 
the membranous lab3Tinth in a state of inflammation and about 
one-half the diameter of the right ear. I will try to explain my 
theory for this disease : 
I believe that it is caused by a hypersemia of the membran¬ 
ous labyrinth and a partial occlusion of the Eustachian tube, and 
not a haemorrhage into the labyrinth, as suggested by Fleming, 
for if that were the cause why should the symptoms be onl}^ 
transitory ? The hyperaemia depending on either, first a venous 
stasis from mechanical or other obstruction to the return cur¬ 
rent, or, second, an increased arterial supply. First, the causes 
of the venous stasis might be mechanical obstructions to the 
