Ophthalmovascular choke / by George M. Gould.

  • Gould, George Milbrey, 1848-1922.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Ophthalmovascular choke / by George M. Gould. 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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    stopped. Intellect and literature are not needed by the [ion] Eddyite. Ophthalmic vascular choice, if so much is admitted and be- comes established, may be found to constitute the etiologic factor, or at least a frequent and chief one, in the rise of many ocular diseases now veiled in mystery. It is remarkable that we are in more or less complete ignorance of the origin of so large a number of the principal intraocular diseases. The pathogenesis of most, in truth, is either unknown, or erroneously ascribed to vague and non-explaining conditions. Take all the entire classes of diseases characterized by pig- mentary and atrophic degeneration of the retina both central and peripheral; they are preceded usually by stages of acute inflammatory processes, followed by atrophies precisely as one would expect to find in a shutting off of the normal blood- supply. There are islets of preserved retinal sensibility; the central or macular portions may keep their function better, or the peripheral ones may do so; the normal central acuteness may be well or poorly sustained, etc., according to the cir- cumstances and accidents of the nature of the choking; or, as in our cases, the sensibility may be retained more or less per- fectly but only for abnormally short spaces of time. I suspect that in most or all of the cases by the anatomic pathologists called retinal arteriosclerosis, ophthalmovascular choke is the real disease instead of primary sclerotic changes in the vessel-walls. That elder choking called cholced disc, together with manv mysterious cases of optic atrophy,—may not these and manv retinitises be caused by a bad blood-supply, or, what is the same thing, a deficient blood excretion ? The great mystery of the origin of glaucoma may be at last resolved by weigh- ing well the natural and inevitable consequences of vascular choke. The ludicrous inadequacy and ineptitude of the text- book etiologies of glaucoma, illustrate—well, thej' illustrate “much.” Exophthalmic goiter with its chief symptoms, tachycardia and exophthalmos, may possibly have a primary, or at least a cooperating cause in the denutrition and abnor- malisms of secretion following a deficient blood-circulation of the internal parts of the eye..