Some recent theories regarding the pathogeny of sympathetic ophthalmia, viewed from a macroscopic standpoint / by Samuel Theobald.

  • Theobald, Samuel, 1846-1930.
Date:
[1884]
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Credit: Some recent theories regarding the pathogeny of sympathetic ophthalmia, viewed from a macroscopic standpoint / by Samuel Theobald. 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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    in the optic nerve and retina, as he expresses it, refers. Had he followed the same rule in regard to the optic nerve and retina that he did with the ciliary nerves, and taken account only of those cases in which histological alterations are men- tioned, his percentage of pathological changes would have been reduced from 79 to about 40. A striking contrast, as regards the condition of the ciliary nerves, is brought out, if we group separately Alt's own cases, and those which he has taken from literature. Thus, in the 31 cases of his own in which the ciliary nerves are mentioned, they are described as normal 26 times, or in 83.8 per cent, of the eyes, and as presenting histological or gross pathological changes 5 times, or in only 16.1 per cent.; while in the 15 cases from literature in which they are spoken of, they are described as normal in but 33i Per cent, of the eyes, and as pathological in 66J per cent. In the Archives of Ophthalmology, September, 1881/ Dr. W. C. Ayres, of New York, gives the notes of 4 eyes enucleated for sympathetic inflammation, and 3 for sym- pathetic irritation, which he examined microscopically, and in every one of which he discovered pathological changes in the ciliary nerves. If we add these to the 15 cases taken from literature by Alt, we have a total of 22 cases, in which the ciliary nerves are pathological 17 times, or in 77.2 per cent., and normal only 5 times, or in 22.7 per cent. In the same paper there is reported also a case in which an eye containing a gun-cap was enucleated for iridocyclitis purulenta. In this instance the fellow-eye had manifested no sympathy, and the examination of the enucleated eye revealed the very significant fact that every [ciliary] nerve-bundle * * * examined was completely de- generated, and divided somewhere in its course by accumu- lations of small round cells. The next point worthy of comment is, that Alt should have found the ciliary nerves histologically normal (and showing gross pathological changes but twice) in fourteen of the fifteen eyes enucleated on account of sympathetic 1 Vol. x., No. 3, p. 277 et seq.