A case of neuroma of the optic nerve, with remarks and illustrations / by John A. Lidell.

  • Lidell, John A.
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A case of neuroma of the optic nerve, with remarks and illustrations / by John A. Lidell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    she suffered very much from the severity of the inflammation; at the end of this period the eye broke, discharging water (aqueous humor) and matter. After this the pain abated, and the inflammation gradually subsided, till it entirely disappeared by the following October. In the mean time, the patient's suf- ferings had been so severe as to wear her down very much, affecting her general health, and making her thin, and pale, and weak. Much of the ophthalmic enlargement became perma- nent ; that is, the original swelling increased very rapidly during the late period of activity. During the following win- ter she got on tolerably well; her'general health improved, but she was occasionally troubled with paroxysms of pain, neu- ralgic in character, in the left eyebrow, left half of forehead, and the left cheek. The morbid growth had probably attained such a size as to press considerably on the supra and infra- orbital nerves. In the winter of 1856 and 757, she had fever which lasted six weeks, and left her very weak for a long time. This did not seem to effect the local disease one way or the other. The ophthalmic swelling slowly increased in size, and the neuralgic pains in the left eyebrow, forehead, and cheek, gradually increased in severity until I first saw her (July, 1858). For some time before this, she says she had suffered great distress, the paroxysms of pain being frequent and severe. She also says that any considerable amount of pressure upon the protruding mass, or the handling incident to a physical examination of it, produces, besides the supra and infra-orbital neuralgia (by which I mean pains intermittent, and like elec- trical shocks), an aching pain in the mass itself, so severe as to deprive her of sleep for the following thirty-six or forty-eight hours. A misstep in walking, whereby the diseased parts are jarred, produces a similar distress, varying only in intensity. She is not subject to any other pains in the head than those mentioned ; except, perhaps, more or less of a sense of disten- tion in the orbit. She has partial deafness in the left ear, but was not aware of it till I ascertained it during the examina- tion. She menstruated at 14, and has always been regular. There is no hereditary disease in the family. Objective Symptoms.—The patient is pale, and rather thin ; the features are sharpened, and the habitual expression of coun- tenance is that of much distress ; the eye (sound one) is grayish- blue in color, and the hair brown. The patient sits with her head dropping partially forward, apparently from the weight of the tumor. On close inspection, the protruding mass is seen to be regu- lar in shape, rounded, elongated, and somewhat conoidic at the end, and to hang down almost to the level of the nostril; the