Further, in these cases it is much to be desired that the habit of
determining the refraction and visual acuteness at the same time should
be discontinued, particularly in reduced visual acuteness, as the
test-tables only contain a few letters, which have to be recognised at a
distance of 5 to 6 metres. If they have once been read with one eye it
may easily happen that in testing the second eye they are repeated from
memory, without being clearly recognised; even a child soon learns the
few letters by heart. Therefore, when it has been a case of determining
the visual acuteness I have always conducted the examination at a
distance of one metre, as the choice of letters or figures which can be
employed at this distance is much larger than for greater distances. In
every case the reading of test-letters must be used as an additional
means of examination. We must never forget that the test of vision is a
perfectly subjective examination, and that we are obliged first of all
to accept the statements of patients as they are given without knowing
what they are worth. I have met with patients in the most highly
educated classes of society who, in intra-ocular troubles, for example,
hæmorrhage of the retinal artery in the macula lutea, could not
distinguish the largest type in the first examination, and the next day
(perhaps with slight difficulty) could read small print.
Such inaccuracies may continue to exist during repeated examinations and
for long periods. One of my patients, for instance, who first came under
treatment in the year 1873, had extreme myopia in the left eye with good
visual acuity; with the right eye, which was also myopic, and had
suffered for several years from choroiditis of the macula lutea he could
read only No. 20 Snellen, and a year later 7-1/2 was read with
difficulty, word by word. Choroiditis of the macula lutea gradually
developed in the left eye, and in the same proportion the statements as
to visual acuteness of the right eye improved, so that finally at the
end of 1881, 0·5 was read with difficulty with this eye, while the left
still sufficed to read 0·4 (at about 5 cm.). As I tried to comfort the
patient, who was very anxious about his left eye, with the fact that the
right eye had considerably improved in the course of the year, he
replied that he might previously have seen just as well with the right
eye if he had only taken the trouble, this was certainly my own opinion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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