Loss of sight from loss of blood / by George H. Oliver, assistant surgeon, Royal Eye and Ear Hospital, Bradford.

  • Oliver, George Henry.
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Loss of sight from loss of blood / by George H. Oliver, assistant surgeon, Royal Eye and Ear Hospital, Bradford. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    \ 4 physiological integrity of which is maintained only by a supply of quite normal blood, changes are produced resulting in either suspension or complete annihilation of their function, and the delicacy of function may the more readily be realised when it is comprehended, if indeed it can be, that in the ordinary changes which take place in the retina connected with colour perception, only a small fraction of a second of time is consumed in the bio-chemical changes in the visual purple necessary to the perception of the impulse. Professor Burch gives this interval as 1-700th of a second. It was the occurrence of a case which came to my out-patients that stimulated me to look more especially into this question, and to find, if I could, why it is that loss of sight should follow loss of blood. As you have heard, after a very patient search I find very little light has been thrown on the real relation between the two. A.B., a married woman of 32, complains of bad vision, right eye = 6-12 with a contracted field, rough test, left eye no p.l. Patient was pregnant three months when she had a large haemorrhage; loss of blood continued irregularly during the ensuing three months ; it then ceased. The pregnancy terminated two months before term, accom- panied by much loss of blood. At Christmas the right eye was quite blind, the left eye went a few weeks after, and she was quite blind for five weeks. The right eye has improved up to ^ c a contracted field. The left pupil is dilated and does not react to light, but acts synchronously 6 the right pupil, the reactions of which are normal. Ophthalmoscopy : the right disc is pale in the outer quadrant with some slight reduction in size of the vessels. The left disc is quite pearly white, more resembling the disc of primary optic atrophy of tabes, a disease of which she has no other symptom. More than this, there is little to say. The retinitis of pregnancy is quite out of the question, as shown by the ophthalmoscope, and she certainly never had any other symptom of kidney trouble during the pregnancy; albuminuria was not present at any time. I assume, and I think quite justifiably, that the condition of the eyes and the bad vision are entirely dependent on the losses of blood she sustained during and at the termination of the pregnancy.