Myopia, the result of constitutional disease / by Rayner D. Batten.

  • Batten, Rayner Derry.
Date:
[1891?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Myopia, the result of constitutional disease / by Rayner D. Batten. 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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    individual to decide what is normal or physiological, and what is pathological. No distinct line can be fixed between the two. The extremes are well marked, and no one can fail to recognise them. The recognition of slight increase in pulse tension is largely an individual matter; and in forming the diagnosis it is of importance not to be guided by the pulse alone, but to take into consideration the condition of the heart, and other symptoms. I do not wish to lead any one to suppose that, in the majority of cases of myopia the changes in the pulse, etc., are anything very obvious, or that they can be made out in every case. But I believe that any one who will take the trouble to observe a few cases thoroughly will very soon be convinced of their existence. There are many admirable descriptions of the con- dition of high pulse tension as it occurs in adults, but I know of none as it occurs in the young ; yet I believe it to be a condition by no means rare. But as it gives rise to a different class of symptoms in the young and the adult, it has not been recognised as the same condition. The difference in the characters of the pulse is, I think, explained by the different ages at which the increased tension occurs. Thus in renal cases, or cases of high pulse tension occurring in late life, we have an increased pressure in vessels which have already lost much of their elasticity, and have become firm, fixed, and undilatable. But high pulse tension occurring in a young subject, when the vascular walls are soft and elastic, must produce results far different. The arteries, however great the pressure, still have a reserve of elasticity, and hence can never become hard, as in the renal pulse. Again, in the young, a constant or frequent strain on the arterial walls will gradually cause them to yield and become stretched, and hence the large thin-walled arteries of the myope, due to the stretched fibrous coat. I consider the recurrent pulse is another result of long-continued high arterial tension, and it is but