The influence of changes in the intraocular circulation on the intraocular pressure / by E.E. Henderson and E.H. Starling.

  • Henderson, Edward Erskine, 1870-1929.
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The influence of changes in the intraocular circulation on the intraocular pressure / by E.E. Henderson and E.H. Starling. 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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    stimulation of the sympathetic nerve causes a rise of intraocular pressure but no fall, and it was seen that here also the rise of pressure was synchronous with a contraction of the muscle of the nictitating membrane. Similar results to our own were obtained by Bellarminow® and by Adamtik, though, curiously, the former observer came to the conclusion that the first rise was not due to the orbital muscle because the eyeball as a whole did not move when attached to a Marey’s tambour, although Adamtik had previously shown that this rise of pressure occurred even after the death of the animal. Influence of the fifth nerve on the intraocular pressure. The occurrence of trophic disturbances or of dilatation of the conjunctival vessels after section of the 5th nerve or as a result of irritative lesions of the Gasserian ganglion, has long inclined physio- logists to locate in this nerve vasodilator fibres, and a number of experimental results are to be found in the literature of the subject, which are interpreted as showing that this nerve has a marked vaso- dilator influence on the vessels of the eyeball, or that it is actually a secretory nerve for the intraocular fluid. The action of this nerve, however, is much more difficult to investigate than that of the sympa- thetic, and it is not surprising to find that the most contradictory results have been obtained by different observers. Thus von Hippel and Griinhagen(5), with the idea of stimulating the 5th nerve, put electrodes into the side of the brain and of the medulla, and sent strong shocks through them. They obtained a rise of intraocular pressure to 200 mm. mercury, and conclude that such a rise could not be due to rise in blood-pressure, and must therefore be due to vasodilator effects in the eye. They do not mention, however, that they took the blood-pressure, and their results are evidently worthless. The exposure of the 5th nerve and its stimulation without spread of current to adjacent struc- tures in the cranial cavity is not effected with ease, and we are therefore inclined to doubt the reliability of the results obtained by Bellar- minow <9). This observer states that he stimulated different portions of the Gasserian ganglion, and obtained different effects according to the part of the ganglion stimulated. Thus, stimulation of the ganglion at the centre caused a quick rise of intraocular pressure to 2 or 3 times its normal height, beginning earlier and reaching its maximum sooner than the simultaneous rise of blood-pressure. Stimulation between the origin