Hydrocephalic amaurosis / by Jabez Hogg. Amaurosis and strabismus from ascaris lumbricoides.

  • Jabez Hogg
Date:
[1888]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hydrocephalic amaurosis / by Jabez Hogg. Amaurosis and strabismus from ascaris lumbricoides. 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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    [Reprinted from the British Medical Journal of July, 1888 ] AMAUROSIS AND STRABISMUS FROM ASCARIS LUMBRICOIDES. From a record of cases, carefully tabulated and ex- tending over many years, I find that strabismus in young children is more frequently due to the irritation of intestinal worms than is generally supposed or stated in our manuals of eye diseases. It is, how- ever, quite an uncommon occurrence to find reflex amaurosis and strabismus associated in one and the same person, and arising from the same cause—the pre- sence of worms. In the case I am about to narrate there is one other feature that renders it of more than ordinary interest. My little patient, Ethel D., barely three years old, was, when she came under my care, the inter- mediary hostess of three kinds of entozoa—namely: oxyurides (the little thread-worm), tsenia (tape-worm), and ascaris lumbricoides (round worm). On searching through the medical journals, I have not met with a parallel case, and I have discovered only a very few cases of reflex amaurosis from worms, one of which, nar- rated by Dr. Burgers, was published in the British Medical Journal of 1862. A still smaller number of cases have been reported in which, it is said, death has resulted from perforation of the intestines by ascaris lumbricoides. It has been stated that the three kinds of worms named above will not exist together. Be this as it may, it would be difficult enough to account for their presence in the intestine of so young a child, and belonging as she did to the middle class of society. Pol- luted drinking-water is the carrier of filariae, and infected water is often unwittingly used in households. It is known, too, that the ova and embryos of parasitic