Rheumatism, gout and neuralgia, as affecting the head and ear : with remarks on some forms of headache, in connextion with deafness / by William Harvey.

  • Harvey, William, 1806-1876.
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Rheumatism, gout and neuralgia, as affecting the head and ear : with remarks on some forms of headache, in connextion with deafness / by William Harvey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    188/316 (page 168)
    Brodie entirely agrees with this view, and observes, that a large proportion of the persons that consult him for local diseases are in reality under the innu- again, and we are surprised to see the eyes recovering so completely as they do after these repeated attacks. A gentleman, whom I saw labouring under severe arthritic iritis, told me that his eyes had been inflamed fourteen times, yet vision was unimpaired, though there were in each eye adhesions connecting nearly the whole pupillary border to the capsule. On each attack fresh effusion takes place; the pupil is more and more contracted, and at last rilled entirely with an opaque adventitious membrane. Even now, although sight is destroyed, the texture of the iris is in many cases but little altered. Sometimes one violent attack closes the pupil, or greatly contracts and fills it with a densely opaque plug. Sometimes gouty inflammation, when severe and long-continued, causes complete disorganization, with puckering and tubercular projection of the iris, and extinction of sight.—Lawrence, opus cit. p. 319. Lawrence also describes a much more serious gouty inflammation of the eye than the arthritic iritis, in which all the internal struc- tures of the organ are involved. It occurs in the gouty, or in per- sons of that impaired constitution and general health, which are analogous to the arthritic state. The parts affected are the choroid, iris, retina, vitreous humour, lens, and its capsule; and secondarily, the sclerotica and cornea. It ends in loss of sight, with a dilated pupil and opaque lens. Some- times the latter change does not occur, but there is deep-seated green discoloration of the pupil—that is, the appearance called glaucoma. Some of the Germans call this disease ophthalmitis arthritica, because it attacks gouty persons, and involves the whole globe. It is not necessary to describe the symptoms of this malady, for which we must refer to the pages of Lawrence's excellent work (pp. 352-355), but we may add, that Mr. Lawrence states, that