William Lawrence and the English Ophthalmology Textbooks of the 1830s and 1840s

Thompson, H. Stanley; Duffel, Patricia G.

doi:10.1001/archophthalmol.2011.1761

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

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“…Beer’s pupils included the pioneer American surgeon George Frick, and the British surgeon, protégé of John Abernethy, William Lawrence. Indeed, the leading figures in the development of ophthalmology as a speciality in England in the early-to-mid-19th century – Lawrence, Richard Middlemore, and Thomas Wharton Jones – were all highly influenced by Beer’s writings (9).…”

Section: The Origins Of Ophthalmologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Beer’s work came to the attention of the English-speaking medical world through abridgements and translations published by surgeons who had journeyed to Vienna to study with Beer (9). Richard Middlemore’s 1835 account of amaurosis leans heavily on these translations (not least because he did not read German), but also contains an account of amaurosis ‘from mental emotions’, in which a woman of 60, depressed and distressed from death of two of her children complained that:the sight became impaired very gradually and without pain, and that she was much plagued, first with a scotoma [in the sense that Beer used the term, i.e.…”

Section: Subjective Visual Sensationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Muscae volitantes: A 19th-century precursor of visual snow syndrome?

Weatherall

2024

Cephalalgia

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Purpose Visual snow syndrome comprises a whole-field static-like visual disturbance, with increased awareness of entopic phenomena, an inability to suppress the ‘just seen’ and photophobia. Visual snow syndrome is often associated with other problems such as headache, tinnitus, and anxiety. The earliest reported case of a patient experiencing symptoms consistent with visual snow syndrome dates only to 1995. This paper seeks to find patterns of experience in the medical literature of the past that are reminiscent of visual snow syndrome, to challenge the view that it is in any sense a novel disorder. Descriptions of subjective visual sensations such as experienced by patients suffering from visual snow syndrome were sought in treatises, textbooks and other literature generated by leading figures in 19th-century ophthalmology, physiology and physics. Conclusion While retrospective diagnosis of modern illness categories in historical medical literature is an enterprise fraught with pitfalls, it is nonetheless possible to see patterns of experience in the 19th-century medical literature that are strongly reminiscent of visual snow syndrome.

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Section: The Origins Of Ophthalmologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Subjective Visual Sensationsmentioning

confidence: 99%