The pathological anatomy of the nervous centres / by Edward Long Fox.

  • Fox, Edward Long, 1832-1902.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The pathological anatomy of the nervous centres / by Edward Long Fox. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    443/462 (page 389)
    It is probable that in general encephalitis there is great suffusion of the retina, such as has been seen in the eyes of patients immediately after a paroxysm of mania. Facts, however, are Avanting in support of this statement. Cerebral Softenimj.—Softening of the brain seldom, if ever, by itself causes any alteration that can be detected by the mirror. It cannot induce any obstruc- tion to the flow of blood from the retina, nor can it cause neuritis. Softening, however, of the optic centres will cause atrophy ; and cerebral softening itself often depends upon disease of the cerebral vessels, disease which, even if it does not aflect the vessels of the optic centres, may attack the arteria centralis retina?, causing first ana3mia and then atrophy of the disc. With the exception, therefore, of the cases in which softening attacks the optic centres, it is right to say that atrophy of the disc coexistinij; with cerebral softeninii' owns no connection furtlier tlu^n a similarity of cause in arterial degeneration. Cerebral IJcui)iorrha(je.—The condition of the retina in cerebral heemorrhage is somewhat complicated, because ha3morrhage of the brain so often depends upon renal disease, and renal disease frequently })roduces retinal changes, of which I sliall speak bv-and-by. Apart, however, from these albuminuric alterations in tiie eye, cerebral haemorrhage seldom leads to any change in the fundus of the eye; but optic neuritis is occasionally a sequence of it. Bouchut thinks, liowever, tliat large cerebral liiemorrluiges may cause optic lesions by the obstruction they produce to the return