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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    By J. H. TOMLINSON, M.RC.S., L.E.C.P., Clinical Assistant Royal Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital and Clinical Assistant West End Hospital for Nervous Diseases, Welbeck Street. Mr. President and Gentlemen, —Knickerbocker's History of New York begins with an analysis of the various theories on the subject of the creation of the world. The author justifies the relevancy of the subject-matter on the ground that if the world had never been created there were grave reasons for supposing that New York city would never have had an existence. If with the title Eye Symptoms in Tabes I commence with a description of the nervous system, you may suppose that I am about to use a similar argument in justification, but it is not so. The right understanding of the ocular troubles of tabes is so dependent upon a clear conception of the pathological process taking place in the peripheral and central nervous systems that I plead for no indulgence for spending a few minutes in running over the anatomy of a portion of the spinal column and its relation with the nuclei of the cerebral nerves. This is all the more important, inasmuch as recent researches (pre-eminently those of Dr. Mott) have brought about a consider- able modification in the views held as to the pathology of tabes. Charcot pointed out as a remarkable anomaly that, whereas the spinal disease was a centrifugal degeneration, the affection of the optic nerve was a centripetal one. It would appear that there is no such anomaly; the spinal disease itself is centripetal. The modern method of describing the nervous system is, as you are aware, by means of systems of neurons. The nerve-cell is the neuron body, its axis cylinder process the axon or neuraxon. This axon may terminate in free arborization, or become continuous with a medullated nerve fibre. Certain other protoplasmic exten- sions of the cell terminate in finely-branched, plume-like twigs; these are dendrons. The neurons of tho cerebrum and the cere- bellum are spoken of as upper neurons, those of the spinal cord as lower neurons. Tabes dorsalis is a primary, progressive degenera- tion of the first afferent (sensory) projection systems of neurons, by which peripheral sensations are cut off from the various parts of the central nervous system, the commonest and most obvious * A paper read before the Windsor and District Medical Society.