Page:Philosophical Transactions - Volume 014.djvu/169

Rh sense from that of a. Hippocrates ) is call'd by later Writers Nyctalopia or Nocturna Caecitas, and is accordingly described; with the Remedies for it, by b. Galen, c. Pliny , d. Foreflus , e, Sennertus , and f. Joel ; to whom I refer the Reader. Cornelius Celjus, (de Medicin. lib. 6. cap. 6. §. 38.) mentions it under the title of Imbecilitas oculorum; but none of all these have given so exact and full a history of it as will be found in the foregoing Relation.

2. To this unusual case I shall subjoyn, another relating to the same subject, which I lately had the opportunity of observing here in St. Thomas's Hospital, together with my worthy friend Dr. William Dawkins (whom I have the happiness to be joyn'd with there) in a Patient we had for some time under our hands.

The case was this; Daniel Wright aged about 19 years, of a sanguine and plethoric Constitution, about the end of the year 1683. was seiz'd with a dizziness and pain in in the upper part of the head, which he told me he could impure to nothing but the excessive cold weather, which then raged with us to extremity. Hereupon having the misfortune to apply himself to an ignorant Pretender to Physick here, a Plaister for his head was only order'd at that time (without any evacuations) but whether it was the Empl. cephalicum cum eupborbio in the Dispens. or any other I could not learn. The Patient upon this grows much worse, the pains of his head more fixt and girding (I suppose from some Spasms or constrictive Motions of the Meninges) to which succeeded convulsive Fits (which were accompanied afterwards with a Tremor upon his Arms and Legs) and upon this all Objects appear'd double to him, from the fibres of the optic nerves being thus distorted from their wonted Parallelism. After this poor young man had been thus tortur'd by his Empirick, and this Distemper for about 3

month