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known as Hereditary Optic-Nerve Atrophy, where certain morbid 
changes of optic-nerve structures of a sufficient amount for ready 
recognition take place during the years just previous to adolescence 
in subjects who frequently have consanguineous ties, extending in 
some instances through several generations, the writer has ventured 
the following terse notes of one such family that he has had the op- 
portunity to submit several of its members to careful and prolonged 
clinical research extending over several years. 
In 1892, he saw for the first timea man, aged twenty-seven years, 
who stated that for the past year the sight of both eyes had been 
gradually failing, this being accompanied by frontal headaches and 
dizziness. No history of any general sickness was given and no 
clinical evidences of the introduction of any toxic agents into the 
system could be obtained. He asserted that his mother’s three 
brothers were similarly affected. 
Examination showed that central vision for both form and color 
was highly defective. The ophthalmoscopic appearances were 
those of a semiatrophic condition of the optic-nerve head. 
At irregular intervals, though especially later in the disease, vari- 
ously colored phosphenes appeared in the centre of the visual fields 
and attacks of ‘‘ fogging of vision’’ during perspiration without 
watering of the eyes came on. Ocular pain upon exposure to 
light, with gradual decreasing color perception, passing through 
the failure of recognizing green, red, blue and yellow ensued, until 
at last nothing but equal intensities of ‘‘ color’’ were laid side by 
side without reference to tint. 
This peculiar history and the patient’s assertion that his three 
maternal uncles had suffered in the same manner induced a careful 
ocular examination to be made of as many ofthe family as possible. 
This resulted in the finding of more or less similar ocular symp- 
toms and conditions in all that could be seen. It also elicited the 
fact that the disease with one exception had passed from unaffected 
mothers to affected sons through six generations on the maternal 
side; a family that the writer had the privilege to study in a num: 
ber of its members ten years ago and had careful clinical notes of 
several in the earlier generations. 
This brief history of a gross pathological condition first appear- 
ing about or a short time before adolescence, and eventuating in 
permanent partial blindness at about twenty-seven years of age, is 
