Synchysis scintillans / by David Webster.

  • Webster, David, 1842-1923.
Date:
[1883?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Synchysis scintillans / by David Webster. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    SYNCHYSIS SCINTILLANS. By DAVID WEBSTER, M.D., PROFESSOR OF OPHTHALMOLOGY IN THE NEW YORK POLICLINIC. . V THAT affection of the vitreous humor known as scin¬ tillating or sparkling synchysis, is, in New York, a comparatively rare disease. At the Brooklyn Eye and Ear Hospital only two cases were seen among the twenty-eight thousand eight hundred and sixteen (28,816) patients with diseases of the eye treated at that institution in the first fourteen years of its existence. At the Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital, New York, three cases were found among the twenty-six thousand seven hundred and fifty-six (26,756) eye-patients registered there during its first thirteen years of work. Thus out of a total of 45,572 patients with dis¬ eases of the eye only five were found with crystals of cholesterine in the vitreous humor. In India, according to Mr. Macnamara, formerly of Cal¬ cutta, now of London, the affection is much more frequently met with. He says : “ Among the natives of India these appearances are sometimes seen in consequence of the lens having been thrust down into the vitreous in the operation of depression or reclination for the cure of cataract. We not unfrequently have patients applying for relief at the Ophthalmic Hospital under these circumstances, suffering from atrophy of the retina and choroid, together with sparkling synchysis.” (“Diseases of the Eye,” 1882, p, 397.) The disease is well known to be due to degenerative changes occurring in the vitreous humor, though the causes of those changes, when not traumatic, are not always apparent. Reprinted from the Archives of Ophthalmology, Vol. xii, No. 2, June, 1883.