Southern Medical and Surgical Journal - Georgia Regents University

a1867] Hicks on Night-Blindness. 473pupils refuse to respond ;and such was the uniform resultin all my examinations. It was a curious circumstance,that the pupil should remain dilated, and the patient failto see—that the ciliary nerves and the retina should layaside their functions as soon as the sun disappeared, toresume them again upon his rising.Observing this fact,and justly attributing it to the more stimulating qualityof sunlight, I concluded that the affection consisted in awant of tone in the nervous apparatus of the eye—condition of enfeebled local innervation, reaching nofarther than the retina, and a branch of the ophthalmicnerves. The remedy successfully used confirms thisview.Cupping, leeching, blistering, mercury, and iodidepotassium, were used extensively, but in my hands didharm rather than good.Cases frequently recovered spontaneously, after alltreatment had been abandoned. But a great many ofthem were very obstinate — yielding to nothing within thehands of medical officers, except a furlough, and this wasthe grand remedy, failing in no instance that came undermy observation. The disease resulted from the meagrediet, the absence of vegetables and vegetable acids, andother depressing influences of a soldier's life. The proofof this is found in the factthat the removal of these influencesand the substitution of those of home—its cleanliness,improved diet, and relief from mental anxiety andphysical exhaustion, never failed of effecting a speedycure. It is furthermore well known that poverty andwant and filth areof the eye which are most similar toof most frequent occurrence inthe fruitful sources of those affectionsthis, and which arethe degraded portions ofthe populations of large cities.As before remarked, in the great majority of cases thisdisease is little more than an inconvenience—a simple38