herwise the patient must die; and
those motions, which are less necessary, feel a deficiency of it, as these
of the organs of sense and muscles; which constitute vertigo; and lastly
the voluntary motions, which are still less immediately necessary to life,
are frequently partially destroyed, as in palsy; or totally, as in
apoplexy.

15. _Murmur aurium vertiginosum._ The vertiginous murmur in the ears, or
noise in the head, is compared to the undulations of the sound of bells, or
to the humming of bees. It frequently attends people about 60 years of age;
and like the visual vertigo described above is owing to our hearing less
perfectly from the gradual inirritability of the organ on the approach of
age; and the disagreeable sensation of noise attending it is owing to the
less energetic action of these irritative motions; which not being
sufficiently distinct to excite their usual associations become succeeded
by our attention, like the indistinct view of the apparent motions of
objects mentioned in vertigo visualis. This may be better understood from
considering the use, which blind men make of these irritative sounds, which
they have taught themselves to attend to, but which escape the notice of
others. The late blind Justice Fielding walked for the first time into my
room, when he once visited me, and after speaking a few words said, "this
room is about 22 feet long, 18 wide, and 12 high;" all which he guessed by
the ear with great accuracy. Now if these irritative sounds from the
partial loss of hearing do not correspond with the size or usual echoes of
the places, where we are; their catenation with other irritative ideas, as
those of vision, becomes dissevered or disturbed; and we attend to them in
consequence, which I think unravels this intricate circumstance of noises
being always heard in the head, when the sense of hearing begins to be
impaired, from whatever cause it occurs.

This ringing in the ears also attends the vertigo from intoxication; for
the irritative ideas of sound are then more weakly excited in consequence
of the deficiency of the sensorial power of association. As is known by
this also being attended with disagreeable sensation, and by its
accompanying other diseases of debility, as strokes on the head, fainting
fits, and paralytic seizures. For in this vertigo from intoxication so much
sensorial power in general is expended on the increased actions of the
stomach, and its nearest connections, a