Literary neurologic syndromes. Alice in Wonderland
L. A. Rolak
Department of Neurology, Houston Veteran's Affairs Medical Center, TX.
Many neurologic syndromes are named for literary characters. For example,
the "Alice in Wonderland" syndrome of altered body perceptions, usually
caused by migrainous ischemia, is so called because of the resemblance of
its symptoms to the fluctuations in size and shape that plague the main
character in Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel Alice in Wonderland. The medical
symptoms of distorted body images match the literary description so
precisely that illustrations from the original book depict them very
accurately. Because Lewis Carroll suffered from classic migraine headaches,
scholars have speculated that he may have experienced this syndrome
himself.