Eye Care Blog

Retinoblastoma is an infantile tumour on the retina of a hereditary type. The baby or infant develops a white pupil and sometimes a white fluid in the front part of the eye. If unchecked, the whitish mass behind the lens of the eye will continue to grow and could even kill the child. The eye must either be removed or treated with radiotherapy. To save the child’s life it is sometimes necessary to remove both eyes. It is a very rare condition, and calls for the highest degree of expertise, both in the surgery involved and in patient aftercare.

`Floaters’ are experienced as black or grey specks drifting across the field of vision. When the eye moves, the specks move with it, but usually after a slight interval. They are due either to degeneration of the vitreous jelly or small haemorrhages into the vitreous from the retina, and are present in the eye of nearly all short-sighted people over the age of twenty, and indeed in the eyes of most people from middle age onwards. Noticed for the first time, they can cause unnecessary alarm, whereas in fact there is seldom any cause for worry unless they present themselves suddenly and in great profusion. Seen when the light contrasts are greatest, or when you are depressed and introspective, floaters were formerly described as signs of melancholy having their origin in the liver. There is an element of truth in this diagnosis since it is known that excessive amounts of alcohol can lead to the kind of retinal decay that generates just the type of particle that ends up floating in the vitreous. The condition was well known even to the ancients, who called floaters `muscae volitante’ , or ‘flying flies’.

Perhaps at this point it would also be appropriate to mention nicotine poisoning, since tobacco and alcohol are often taken together. Tobacco poisoning leads to the depression of the cone system in the retina. Colour or red-green vision is not infrequently affected by chronic nicotine addiction. A weakness of the eye-muscle nerves may follow, and even premature atrophy of the optic nerve. It is considered that nicotine poisoning together with alcoholism is associated with vitamin B deficiency, and vitamin B is essential to the well-being of the eye. Indeed, precisely because the various parts of the eye are composed of highly sensitive tissues it should come as no surprise that the eyes are increasingly regarded as indicators of the health of the whole body, and there is even a movement, called iridology, that claims to diagnose a broad spectrum of diseases just by looking at the front of the eye (the iris).

In reality this is simply an extension of traditional medical practice. When ordinary doctors suspect certain diseases, for example jaundice (hepatitis), they will examine the eye and its lids. But iridologists make much wider claims, and in some parts of America even go as far as providing a description of the mental condition of the subject simply from examining a greatly enlarged photograph of the iris. Whereas there can be no doubt that such photographs can show up such features as an excess of cholesterol and fatty substances in the whole body, iridology should be seen for what it is: a system of dietary diagnosis with the occasional and unwarranted leap into psychiatric speculation. But in Hypochondriapolis there are more diseases, and more cures, than are dreamt of in the hospital laboratory.

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Heredit¬ary Eye Disease Infantile Tumour, Retinoblastoma

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• Eye Floating Specks: their Cause and Treatment continue...
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