On the anomalies on accommodation and refraction of the eye : with a preliminary essay on physiological dioptrics / by F. C. Donders ; translated from the author's manuscript by William Daniel Moore.

  • Donders, F. C. (Franciscus Cornelis), 1818-1889.
Date:
1864
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the anomalies on accommodation and refraction of the eye : with a preliminary essay on physiological dioptrics / by F. C. Donders ; translated from the author's manuscript by William Daniel Moore. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    convexitas nimia. These two were indeed more than a mere optical fiction. Deceived by the greater depth of the chamber of the eye, observers thought that, viewed in profile, they saw a more convex cornea in myopes. And certainly it was also a matter of observation that in highly myopic individuals the eyeballs are often large and prominent. We find this fact already mentioned by much earlier writers than Boer- haave. . . . But still this cause was in general not sufficiently put forward, and until a few years ago no decided opinion whatever was adopted. Von Graefe (1854) even acknowledges that previously to his examination of eyes with staphyloma posticum, he thought that the cause of myopia was to be sought in the vitreous humour. Now we are aware that it was an advance when, putting aside other causes, writers adhered to the increased length of the visual axis. Such an elongation was anatomically first found by Scarpa (1801), in two females eye, and was decribed by him under the name of staphyloma, because it appeared to be a morbid distention. This was perhaps the reason why it did not occur to Scarpa to bring the deviation he had established into connexion with myopia, for observers were at that time far from suspecting that an atrophic condition was connected with myopia. Subsequently, Von Ammon remarks (1832) ,that the staphyloma posticum of Scarpa is not of such rare occurrence as had been supposed, and that the distention is usually greatest at the posterior pole,—always without seeking a connexion with myopia. The first who states that he had found in the dead body the eye of a nearsighted person pear-shaped is Ritterich (1839); but it was in the dissections of Arlt (1856), who, in various eyes of myopes, found an evident elongation of the visual axis, formed at the expense of the posterior wall, that the great importance of this distention with respect to myopia was studied and generally recognised. To this it certainly contributed much, that after the invention of the ophthalmoscope, the peculiar changes in the fundus oculi of myopes were discovered in different quarters which changes were unmistakably connected with the posterior distention of the bulb.