Myopia, the result of constitutional disease / by Rayner D. Batten.

  • Batten, Rayner Derry.
Date:
[1891?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Myopia, the result of constitutional disease / by Rayner D. Batten. 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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    I think I shall have got one step nearer it if I can show that the change in the eye is not an isolated one, affecting the eye only, but is part of a general constitutional change. The acute or rapid production of myopia is, I think, not sufficiently recognised. If inquiry is made of patients as to when the short-sightedness began, they will often give a most definite history of the time of its onset or increase. Of course it is easy to deny this history, and insist upon the proof of good vision previously ; but this method of proceeding is hardly fair. If a patient can give a history of onset of short-sight so comparatively sudden that he fixes it as having occurred in the course of a few weeks, he may, I think, be reasonably believed. The constitutional causation of the increase of myopia is recognised to a limited extent. Nettleship says, Myopia seldom increases after the age of 25, unless under special circumstances. General enfeeblement of health, as after severe illness or prolonged suckling, seriously increases the risk of its progress, even after middle life. [Nettleship, Diseases of the Eye, p. 280.] But it is only when the proof is so positive that there is no possibility of denying it, that the acute increase of myopia is allowed, and histories of the acute onset of myopia are seldom sought for, and rarely believed. In fact, the trouble and ingenuity that is usually taken to explain it by, or attribute it to, any cause except the most obvious is truly wonderful. But surely it does seem most reasonable that, if constitutional causes are recognised as an important factor in the increase of myopia, they should also be an important factor in its original causation. Cases of acute myopia are, of course, comparatively rare. Myopia is generally a chronic condition, of slow onsat, and slow progress ; so slow that the patient only recognises its progress by the occasional necessity of changing his glasses. My argument is, that if acute