The localising value of optic neuritis in intracranial tumour / by J.M. Martin.

  • Martin, J.M.
Date:
[1897]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The localising value of optic neuritis in intracranial tumour / by J.M. Martin. 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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    Reprinted, from The Lancet, July 10, 1897. Duking the last thirty years general opinion has wavered greatly as regards the certainty and frequency with which optic neuritis is produced by a growth within the cranium, and the greatest authorities from time to time have made diametrically opposite statements with regard to this con- dition. At various times it has been stated that optic neuritis has no localising value as regards the seat of disease, and at other times the directly contrary opinion has been put forward. Thus Dr. Hughlings Jackson in 1880 stated that “ optic neuritis is of no value in localising disease in any part of the cerebrum or cerebellum,” and Mr. Horsley now holds that optic neuritis is of distinct value in locating the position of the disease, more particularly as regards the side on which the disease is situated. But it is when we come to the question of unilateral optic neuritis that we find the greatest difference cf opinion. For some observers state that in a case in which optic neuritis appears only in one eye, or appears in one eye before the other, or is more marked in one eye than in the other, the seat of lesion is on the opposite side of the brain; whereas others equally positively state that the lesion is on the same side as the eye in which the optic neuritis first appears or is more marked. It is as an attempt to try to arrive at the true facts of the case by examining rather a larger number of reports than has been presented before that I now bricg forward the results of my analysis of 600 cases, which I have collected from various sources. Before I begin the discussion cf the special subject of this paper it will be of some value —if only to confirm the researches of former investigators— to give a general analysis of my series of cases and then consider the question of the localising value of optic neuritis. The result will not be so complete as I had hoped it would be, as in very few cases comparatively has it been noted in which eye the optic neuritis appeared first or was more marked.