The toxic amblyopias: their classification, history, symptoms, pathology, and treatment.

  • George Edmund de Schweinitz
Date:
1896
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The toxic amblyopias: their classification, history, symptoms, pathology, and treatment. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    Gelsemium and Conium, the former at one time nsed as a mydriatic, are drugs which, either in the form of their active principles or as tinctures or fluid extracts, have very decided actions upon the human system, paralyzing peripheral motor nerves, and therefore affect- ing the iris and ciliary body. They do not, however, produce disturbance of vision in other respects. Scopolamine, generally used in the form of the hydro- chlorate, an atropoid alkaloid derived from the roots of the Sco])olia Atropoides, and especially brought into prominence by Kaehlmann,1 is an active mydriatic and paralyzant of the ciliary muscle. Several cases of poison- ing have occurred under its influence, but perhaps only when it was injudiciously employed. A very remarka- ble result recorded by Thomas K. Pooley Ms a notable diminution of visual acuteness after the full effect of the drug on accommodation. Pooley does not consider this temporary amblyopia of much moment; but the fact that it occurs at all is a matter of considerable importance and deserves investigation. If we except the excessive smoking of stramonium leaves, the visual disturbances caused by mydriatics are for the most part, then, due to their action on the ciliary muscle, and have no connection with the optic nerve or retina, unless future experience should show that sco- polamine is more active in this respect than it is known to be at present Drugs whose prominent action on the eye is the pro- duction of myosis include four substances, the most im- portant of which is eserine, the other three being pilo- carpine, muscarine, and curare. Eserine, one of the alkaloids of the Physostigma 1 Klin. Monatsbl. f. Augenheilk., February, 1893, xxxi. * Therapeutic Gazette, 1894, n. s., x., p. 162.
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