Eye symptoms in tabes dorsalis / by J. H. Tomlinson.

  • Tomlinson, J. H.
Date:
[1902?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Eye symptoms in tabes dorsalis / by J. H. Tomlinson. 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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    disc undergoes a partial selective absorption, hence the frequency of the bluish tinge. The disc is bluish for the same reason that milk is bluish; the physiological cup deepens, and the lamina cribroea becomes very distinct; the vision goes from bad to worse, and finally ends in total blindness. Through the kindness of Dr. Savill, with whom I have the honour of working as clinical assistant, I have had the opportunity of carefully examining several cases of tabes, and have his permission to use the results of my examination and the notes made on their progress from time to time: Case 1.—The case of C. P., a man of fifty, a boot-finisher, is so typical that I will go into particulars in some detail; further, it brings out a symptom that occasionally appears in the atrophic process, viz., colour vision, about which considerable interest gathers. In 1894 he was working one night, taking a bicycle to pieces. lie remembers it greatly fatigued him; he was straining a good deal, and he felt quite ill afterwards and went to bed. The next morning he awoke with a squint, the right eye turning out- wards. In seven weeks' time this passed away; he saw as clearly as ever. About this time he had rheumatics about the shoulders and in the arms. He got the missis, as he remarked, to rub liniment into the parts. He went on well until 1897, when he got very weak; then in April, 1898 (four years after the first attack), he was taken with a severe pain between the eyes, and his vision began to fail. About this time he had a severe chill while watching some sports upon a cold afternoon. The next morning he noticed he could not smell properly, and his food lost its taste. He soon afterwards began to notice a fog before his eyes when looking down the street; then he said it got nigher, and the houses across the road were not as distinct as formerly; then he had difiiculty in recognising passers-by, and soon he bumped against people in the street, and had to be led by the hand. He has had pain in the pit of the stomach, and has felt pain if, by accident, he receives a jerk when passing off a step or the like; he has had, and has still, numbness down the inside of the arms, and over the sides and front of the thorax. The right knee-jerk is increased, the left absent. He has no ataxia, but is a little unsteady when standing with heels together. He has atrophy of both discs, with very clear laminae cribrosffi; the arteries and veins are both smaller than normal. Both pupils are fixed, the right widely dilated, the left moderately contracted. He managed to continue at his work until October, 1898, though he declares he felt rather than saw it. Since December, 1898, he has not been able to see clearly even a light, though he