Note 199 — PART II.

This complication was not so common as to be regarded as a constant and pathognomonic sign of Greek elephantiasis, but it is noted as an important and frequent one, by various authors, both ancient and modern. Hally-Abbas tells us, in our diagnosis of a case of the disease, to be particular in examining “album oculorum ne forte turbatum est” (Lib. i. cap. xxiv.); Rhazes attributes great value as a diagnostic mark of his Juddam or elephantiasis to the “conturbatio albedinis oculorum” (Lib. v. cap. cxx.); Avicenna, among his incipient signs, states “et apparet in oculis obfuscatio ad rubedinem declivis” (Lib. iv. Fen. iii. Fr. 3, cap. ii.) Not to multiply examples, I may merely mention that Theodoric, in the thirteenth century, places early among his list of signs “oculorum in albedine lividitas” (Lib. iii. cap. lv.); see also Lanfranc (Doct. i. Tr. iii. c. 7, albedo oculorum obfuscator); Arnald of Villeneuve (Brev. ii. c. 46, multum rubeae); Gilbert (Lib. viii. oculi circulos habent rubros), etc. Dr. Heberden, in his account of the tubercular leprosy in Madeira, states, in regard to a case, “that the confirmed elephantiasis was attended with livid and scirrhous tubercles, which had overspread the face and limbs; the whole body was emaciated; the eyebrows inflated; the hair of the eyebrows fallen off entirely; the bones of the nose depressed; the alae nasi tumefied, as likewise the lobes of the ears; with a suffusion in both eyes, which had almost deprived the patient of sight,” etc.—Medical Transactions of the College of Physicians, vol. i. p. 35.