Eyestrain (commonly called asthenopia) / by Ernest Clarke.

Ernest Clarke

Date:: 1892

Credit: Eyestrain (commonly called asthenopia) / by Ernest Clarke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

21/184 page 9

$Ocular pain, the result of strain, may be limited to one eye. It is not at all uncommon to find that when one eye is astigmatic, but takes its share in the ocular work, that it alone becomes painful after use ; and this is more especially the case when the astigmatism is of low degree. Neuralgia.—Supra-orbital neuralgia, or brow ague is superficial pain in the region of distribution of the first division of the fifth nerve. It is often the result of eye- strain, especially in neuropathic subjects. It is probably purely reflex, and is analogous to the intense pain in the brow experienced by some people on eating ices. III. OCULAR HEADACHE: Po€\Wox\.—T\i^ position and character of the headache vary. It may simply amount to a slight aching over the eyes, or at the back of the orbit; it may be a frontal headache. Sometimes it originates, and remains limited, as a vertical or occipital headache, or the pain may originate in the brows and pass to the vertex and occiput, and even down the spine. It may be unilateral, a typical hemicrania, and may be indistinguishable from a true megrim attack. Most writers (with the exception of V. Graefe^) agree that in ciliary asthenopia, the pain is generally orbital and frontal, and in muscular asthenopia, occipital and spinal. Culver suggests . that temporal headache is due to astigmatism.^ Hewetson relates the case of a lady who suffered severely with pain at the back of the neck and tenderness of the spine. She was astigmatic, and was completely cured by glasses.^ Noyes says that the headache, on first waking in the ^ Vide supra. ^ Ainerican Journal of Oph., vol. vi., p. 294. ' General Neuroses having an Ophthalmic Origin, B.M.A. Meet- ing, 1888.$

Eyestrain (commonly called asthenopia) / by Ernest Clarke.

Licence and re-use

Contents