On some of the forms of disease of the eye, constituting the condition commonly called amaurosis / by Ernest Hart.

  • Hart, Ernest, 1835-1898.
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On some of the forms of disease of the eye, constituting the condition commonly called amaurosis / by Ernest Hart. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    the front of the eye. But no small part of the difficulty of the surgeon, as of the despair of the patient, has been due to the fact that the nature of the changes ending so disastrously could not be ascertained during life; and, so far as it could be inferred at all, that inference was due to collateral circumstances, and was, in the majority of cases, little better than a bad, because an im- perfectly founded, guess. Since by the use of a pierced mirror we have learnt from Helmholtz how to place ourselves in the path of the rays of light emerging from the eye which we wish to observe, and thus to catch the image of the retina, of the choroid showing through the retina, and of the choroidal and retinal arteries and veins, we have been in a position accurately to observe those changes which were before only guessed at during life, and imperfectly interpreted after death. The immediate result of ophthalmoscopy has been to show us that amaurosis is not one or two diseases, but a great many; or rather, that it is a symptom binding together a considerable va- riety of morbid conditions; conditions so various, that treatment which would benefit the one would greatly injure the other; so complicated, that many years will be needed fully to unravel their separate pathology; but yet so positive in their