A physician's notes on ophthalmology. 2nd series / by J. Hughlings Jackson.

  • Jackson, John Hughlings, 1834-1911.
Date:
[1875]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A physician's notes on ophthalmology. 2nd series / by J. Hughlings Jackson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    ©xtracts from a periscope OF CONTEMPORARY OPHTHALMIC LITERATURE. ON RECOVERY FROM SEVERE DOUBLE OPTIC NEURITIS, IN A CASE IN WHICH THERE WAS NO DEFECT OF SIGHT. This case, and tlie chromolithographs by Burgess (see the Plate), have already appeared in Yol. IV of Crichton Browne’s West Riding Asylum Reports. By Dr. Browne’s permission the illustrations are reproduced. The upper one shows a disc during the acute stage of neuritis, the lower the same disc after recovery. It is an exceedingly common thing to see neuritis, and neuritis as extreme as that here illustrated, with good vision. Hence, as Dr. Jackson has been urging for many years, the ophthalmoscope should be used by routine in cases of intracra- nial disease. Ophthalmic surgeons admit that optic neuritis may occur with very good sight; but Dr. Jackson wishes to urge that in physician’s practice it does so occur very often. Indeed, there is in the cases of optic neuritis which come under his care rarely enough impairment of sight to prevent the patient reading the smallest type.* But, so far as I know, he says, I have convinced very few persons of the truth of my assertion, that sight is often unaffected in optic neuritis. It seems mere nonsense to some to assert that when there is severe optic neuritis the patient can read briUi“* type. Hence I continue to insist on the fact whenever a legitimate opportunity presents itself. I assert that we have frequently the pathological condition, optic neuritis, without the symptom, defect of sight. This is not a mere pathological curiosity. Those who ignore this fact naturally do not in cerebral cases * What follows, to page 5, is almost a verbatim reprint from Dr. Crichton Browne’s West Biding Asylum “ Beports.” b