Vertigo with diseases of the central nervous system.

VERTIGO is a very specific condition in which the environment or the patient himself seems to rotate. It is purely subjective, but may be associated with objective signs. Patients usually refer to vertigo as dizziness. However, dizziness is a vague, indefinite term which patients may use to refer to many other conditions. They frequently call minor epileptic seizures, attacks of light-headedness, the ataxia of cerebellar disease, episodes of mental confusion, etc, "dizziness." It is of the greatest importance, therefore, for the examiner to determine first the exact nature of the condition from which the patient suffers. In this discussion we are concerned with true vertigo and not with the other conditions which are also called "dizziness." A sense of rotation of one's surroundings or of a rotation of one's self is a manifestation of disease of the vestibular system and the most common cause is disease of the end organ—of