The Diagnosis and Treatment of Meniere's Disease

Prosper Ménière1in 1861 described a disease characterized by vertigo, tinnitus, and nerve deafness which now bears his name. He emphasized the perceptive hearing loss and pointed to the inner ear as the site of the disease. He felt that patients with this disease could readily be differentiated from those who had attacks of vertigo, nausea, and vomiting with no hearing loss. It might be added parenthetically that this is true today and that Ménière's name should not be attached to conditions other than that which he described so well. The terms "pseudo-Ménière's disease," "Ménière's syndrome complex," etc., have no place in modern medical terminology. It was not until 1938 that the histopathologic changes in the inner ear of Ménierè's disease were described by Hallpike.2Hallpike obtained the temporal bones from two patients suffering from Ménière's disease who had died after intracranial section of the eighth nerve. In