Eye Care Blog

A very common phenomenon of imperfect eye sight is that one, already mentioned, which is known as muscae volitantes, or flying flies. These eye floating specks are usually dark or black, but sometimes appear as white bubbles, and in rare cases may assume all the colors of the rainbow. They move somewhat rapidly, usually in curving lines, before the eyes, and always appear to be just beyond the point of fixation. If one tries to look at them directly, they seem to move a little farther away. Hence their name.

The literature of the eye subject is full of speculations as to the origin of these appearances. Some have attributed them to the presence of eye floating specks—dead cells or the debris of cells—in the vitreous humor, the transparent substance that fills four-fifths of the eyeball behind the crystalline lens. Similar specks on the surface of the eye cornea have also been held responsible for them. It has even been surmised that they might be caused by the passage-of tears over the eye cornea.

They are so common in eye myopia that they have been supposed to be one of the symptoms of this condition, although they occur also with other errors of refraction as well as in eyes otherwise normal. They have been attributed to disturbances of the circulation, the digestion, and the kidneys, and because so many insane people have them, they have been thought to be an evidence of incipient insanity. The patent-medicine business has thrived upon them, and it would be difficult to estimate the amount of mental torture they have caused, as the following cases illustrate.

A clergyman who was much annoyed by the continual appearance of eye floating specks before his eyes was told by his eye specialist that they were a symptom of kidney disease, and that in many cases of kidney trouble disease of the retina might be an early symptom. So at regular intervals he went to the specialist to have his eyes examined, and when at length the doctor died he looked around immediately for someone else to make the periodical examination. His family physician directed him to me.

I was by no means as well known as his previous ophthalmological adviser, but it happened that I had taught the family physician how to use the ophthalmoscope after others had failed to do so. He thought, therefore, that I must know a lot about the use of the instrument, and what.the clergyman particularly wanted was someone capable of making a thorough examination of the interior of his eyes and detecting at once any signs of kidney disease that might make their appearance. So he came to me, and I made a very careful examination of his eyes. He went away happy because I could find nothing wrong but he came back periodically just for a check-up.

Once when I was out of town, however, he got a cinder in his eye and went to another oculist to get it out. When

I came back late at night I found him sitting on my doorstep, on the chance that I might return. His story was a pitiful one. The new doctor had examined his eyes with the ophthalmoscope and had suggested the possibility of glaucoma, describing the disease as a very treacherous one which might make him go blind suddenly and which would be agonizingly painful. He emphasized what the patient had previously been told about the danger of kidney disease, suggested that the liver and heart might also be involved, and advised him to have all of these organs carefully examined.

I made another examination of the clergyman’s eyes in general and their tension in particular_; I had him feel his eyeballs and compare them with my own, so that he might see for himself that they were not becoming hard as a stone; and finally I succeeded in reassuring him.

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