BOWMAN LECTUKE. CXXXIII 



continuous in some instances, discontinuous in others in 

 the same genealogy ; two of these (Audeoud, 1895, and 

 Burton-Fanning, the same year), have evidently been 

 drawn up with much care in all respects except as to the 

 ocular details. A list of these pedigrees is given at the 

 end of Appendix VII. 



CHOROID. 



Data as to the family prevalence and heredity of 

 various diseases of the choroid and of the cornea are 

 beginning to accumulate. 



(1) We know that central senile choroiditis is apt to 

 occur in several brothers and sisters.* 



(2) It is of course sometimes difficult to say whether a 

 case should be classed clinically as choroidal or retinal. 

 I have for convenience placed several family cases to 

 which this doubt applies at the end of my recent paper on 

 retinitis pigmentosa, viz., one such group called atrophia 

 gyrata choroidas et retinse by Fuchs, the other (rather 

 paradoxically) a small series in which the choroid is con- 

 genitally absent except over a small area at the macular 

 region. t Putting these two little groups together pro- 

 visionally, we have 23 affected persons of whom 17 or 

 perhaps 18 were male and 5 female. Five were, judging 

 from the records, single cases; the other eighteen occurred 

 in seven families, most of them in siblings only, but once 

 in father and son and once in great-uncle and nephew. In 

 one family the choroidal disease was associated with dulness 

 of intellect, undergrowth of body, and arrest of sexual de- 

 velopment. It is unnecessary to dwell longer on this group. 

 The cases are evidently very rare, and in future examples 

 the family history should be inquired into much more fully. 



* Hutcliinson R.L.O.H., viii, p. 231, in three sisters (1875). I have 

 recorded several such in The Ophthalmoscope, iv, 1906. Magers published 

 one in 1889, Ueler hereditdre Sehnervatrophie u. Tiereditdre Choroiditis 

 Inaiig. Dissert., Jena, 1899. 



t The best known cases of these allied conditions are given in abstract 

 in R.L.O.H., xvi, pp. 369-377, 1908. 



