The causes and prevention of blindness / by Ernst Fuchs ; translated by R. E. Dudgeon with a few notes by M. Roth.

  • Ernst Fuchs
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The causes and prevention of blindness / by Ernst Fuchs ; translated by R. E. Dudgeon with a few notes by M. Roth. 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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    INHERITED EYE DISEASES. tendency to disease. The disease breaks out in consequence of external injury, or even without any such cause. To these hereditary diseases belong many cases of myopia, cataract, glaucoma, &c. The hereditary character of retinitis pigmentosa and certain forms of neuritis is generally acknowledged. To the class of inherited eye diseases, in the wider sense of the term, belong those cases in which the parents convey to their offspring a general dyscrasia (scrofula, tuberculosis, syphilis, &c), thereby laying the foundation for various eye affections. Finally, there are cases of inherited eye affections which are owing, not to a disease, but to the blood-relationship of the parents.—We must now consider more in detail these three categories of hereditary eye affections. I. Eye diseases of the pare?its are transmitted to the offspring. —As already stated, the inherited eye affection in children is either present at birth, or develops itself later. As a rule, the eye affection of the children is not always quite identical with, but is analagous to, that of the parents. There are, however, exceptions to this. Thus, a man who had lost his sight by blennorrhcea neonatorum had two children affected with microphthalmus (MAGNUS). I am acquainted with a physician who has congenital microphthalmus of the right eye. His father lost his eye when a child by iridocyclitis. The con- nexion of the eye disease of father and child is indubitable, for DEUTSCHMANN obtained analogous results in his experiments on rabbits. As regards the inherited eye diseases, there is no question of prophylaxis, properly so called. We possess no means of pre-
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