John Wirvell was a taxi driver, divorcee and an intermittent heavy drinker when he was struck down, in his late 50s, by severe bouts of nausea and vertigo. The attacks were so incapacitating, he could hardly stand, let alone work. Gavin Francis, then his doctor, diagnosed benign paroxysmal positional vertigo or BPPV. The condition, although not fatal, is highly debilitating and well recorded. Hippocrates said it was the fault of a southerly wind.
More recently doctors have blamed the chalky grains that are embedded in jelly in the semicircular canals of the inner ear. Their positions there help to maintain our balance but sometimes these particles become attached to the wrong membranes in the ear. In this way, a patient’s sense of balance was disrupted, it was thought. Treatments involved repeating the movements that triggered a person’s vertigo until he or she became numbed to them. In severe cases, skulls were opened up and nerves cut round the inner ear, risking deafness.
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