To the historically inclined as well as to those interested in narcolepsy and allied conditions, the following report of a case will prove interesting and enlightening.
In a previous communication1 on narcolepsy, I made the statements that narcolepsy was first described in 1877 by Westphal and that up to the present there had been no published report of autopsy in a case of narcolepsy. Both these statements now stand in need of revision, as shown by the following report of a case published by Dr. Richard Bright,2 in January 1836, which I recently found. To Bright, therefore, belongs the credit of being the first to describe clinically and to perform an autopsy in what appears to be a typical case of narcolepsy.
The following history of a case, which is reported verbatim, is the fifth in a series of eleven cases of diseased arteries of the brain.
Case