A practical treatise on the diseases of the eye / by William Mackenzie ; to which is prefixed an anatomical introduction explanatory of a horizontal section of the human eyeball by Thomas Wharton Jones.

Mackenzie, William

Date:: 1854

Credit: A practical treatise on the diseases of the eye / by William Mackenzie ; to which is prefixed an anatomical introduction explanatory of a horizontal section of the human eyeball by Thomas Wharton Jones. Source: Wellcome Collection.

1035/1156

$without anything else being done, he found a considerable improve- ment to take place. ' Linnsei Philosophia Botanica; § 260. p. 206 ; Vienna;, 1755. - On the Influence of Artificial Light in causing Impaired Vision; Edinburgh, 1840. ' Les femmes sont egalement enclines a ces mauvaises habitudes. Berton, Traite Pratique des Maladies des Enfants, p. 800, Paris, 1842. Cette malheureuse passion . amene exactement les memes resultats dans I'autre sexe a tous les ages. Lallemand, Des Partes Seminales Involontaires; Tome : iii. p. 207 ; Paris, 1842. * Ammon's Monatsschrift fiirMedicin; Band i. p. 592 ; Leipzig, 1838. ^ Nouveau Traite des Maladies des Yeux, p. 334 ; Paris, 1722. ° Porterfield's Treatise on the Eye; Vol. i. p. 395 ; Edinburgh, 1759. ' Medical Gazette ; Vol. xiii. p. 631; London, 1834 : Physiology of Vision, p. 185 ; London, 1841. ' Practical Work on the Diseases of the Eye ; Vol. ii. p. 30 ; London, 1840. Lallemand, Op. cit.; Tome iii. p. 392: Phillips, Medical Gazette; Vol. xxx. p. 587; London, 1843. SECTION XII.—NIGHT-BLINDNESS. St/n,—Nocturnal amaurosis. Moon-blindness. Nyctalopia of some, and hemeralopia ' of others ; terms -which it were better altogether to avoid. Nyctalopia, more especially, has been used to signify both seeing by night, and night-blindness. Sometimes even the ; same author uses the word in both these opposite meanings. It seems doubtful whether i it is a compound of and merely, or of yu^, a privative, and &^ ; and a similar doubt I hangs over hemeralopia. Case 869.—As the servant to a corn-miller was employed, one evening near sun- ! set, in mending some sacks, he felt himself suddenly deprived of the use of his I limbs and of his sight. At the time he was attacked by this uncommon disease, he ' was not only entirely free from any pain in his head or limbs, but had even a sen- isation of ease and pleasure; he was, as he expressed himself, as if in a pleasing 1 doze, but perfectly sensible. He was immediately carried to bed, and watched till I midnight ;^ at which time he desired those who attended him to leave him, because ihe was neither sick nor in pain. He continued the whole night totally blind, and 1 without a wink of sleep. When the daylight of the next morning appeared, his :sight returned to him gradually, as the light of the sun increased, till it became as ] perfect as ever. When he rose from his bed, he found his limbs restored to their \usual strength and usefulness, and himself in perfect health. But on the evening of the same day, about sunset, he began to see but obscurely, I his sight gradually departed from him, and he became as blind as on the preceding might; though his limbs continued as well as in perfect health, nor had he, from the f first night, any farther complaint from that quarter. Next day, with the rising sun, this sight returned; and this was the almost constant course of the disease for two rmonths. The symptoms which, from the second night, constantly preceded the blindness, 'were, a slight pain over the eyes, and a noise in his head. That he was totally blind cevery night, when these symptoms appeared, was evident from his not being able tto see the light of a candle, though held close to his eyes; and that in the day his ssi^ht was perfect, was as manifest, from his being capable of reading the smallest rprint, and threading the finest needle. The first day that Dr. Pye saw this patient, he found his eyes perfectly natural; ibut some time after, he observed the pupils, during one of the nocturnal paroxysms, tto be enlarged about one-third beyond their natural diameter. After nearly two rmonths' continuance of the disease, it began to be less regular in its occurrence, the [patient retaining his sight for a single night, or for several nights together, and tthen the bhndness recurring. Dr. Pye put him at last on the use of cinchona, and ; thought it successful in removing the complaint. It must be observed, however, I that the patient, while taking the cinchona, laboured under a spontaneous diarrhoea, lan consequence of which he became gradually weaker and weaker. His sight he iretained from the first day after using the medicine; but ten days after, he became 'Idelinous and deprived of hearing, and, in five days more, he died.^$