THE 

 LONDON, EDINBURGH, and DUBLIN 



PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE 



AND 



JOUENAL OF SCIENCE. 



[FOURTH SERIES.] 



FEBRUARY 1866. 



XI. A Sketch of the Doctrine of Colour-disease. 

 By Dr. E. Rose, Lecturer on Surgery in Berlin*. 



BEFORE I draw the attention of the reader to a simple and 

 very convenient means of exactly ascertaining the nature 

 of the colour-blindness in colour-blind persons, it may be conve- 

 nient to give a sketch of the doctrine of colour-disease, which I 

 have derived from investigations which are published in Virchow's 

 Archiv, in v. Grafe's Archiv, and in the Berlin Klinische Wo- 

 chenschrift. I have up to now investigated thirty-three cases of 

 artificial colour- disease produced by taking santonic acid, two 

 cases produced by atropine, five by liver complaints, one by disease 

 of the kidneys, one case of night-blindness, fourteen cases of 

 congenital colour-disease (the so-called Daltonism), and three 

 cases of congenital colour-blindness. The following are the 

 results of the investigation. 



Excluding hallucinations and phantoms of vision, which, 

 only depending on the action of the brain, are recognized by 

 their not being connected with the incidence of light, and hence 

 do not occur partially, persons actually colour-diseased f come 

 under two great divisions, which I will call colour-blind and 

 colour-mistaken. 



I call colour-blind one whose retina has lost sensibility for 

 coloured light. 



Without an exception, it has been found that with the colour- 

 blind it is always light of the greatest or of the least refrangibi- 

 lity that first becomes imperceptible. 



* Translated from Poggendorff's Annalen for September 1865. 



f Colorations of the media of the eye, which, according to older assump- 

 tions, possibly produced something similar, do not occur in nature. The 

 strongest which occur are not adequate. Virchow's Archiv, vol. xxx. p. 442. 



Phil. Mag. S. 4. Vol. 31. No. 207. Feb. 1866. II 



