![]() ![]() Douglas Argyll Robertson (1837-1909) and his pupil. While at a place called Gondal, near what is today known as Mumbai, he caught a cold… and died!Īn ardent scholar, a multifaceted individual, a charming party-goer, a legend in his own field, Douglas Moray Argyll Robertson is my choice for the Doctor of the Month for July! He moved to the Island of Jersey in 1904 and in 1908 made a trip to India. He also has an Indian connection, albeit, in a rather dubious manner! Following his retirement from active hospital service in 1897, he had not been keeping in the best of health. He was a champion archer and was an honorary member of the Royal Company of Archers, who were the body guards of the Queen in Scotland. Even though it was recreation, however, he brought to it the same skill he had as a surgical operator, winning the gold medal of the Royal and Ancient Club of St. He attributed his good health to golf and considered it the finest recreation in the world. “His handsome features and his tall, athletic frame made him the cynosure of all female eyes in his youth and in his later years, clad in a grey frock-coat and top hat, his dignified manner combined with his genial old-world courtesy made him conspicuous in any assembly and a magnificent ambassador of Scotland, firmly establishing that country in the social world of ophthalmology. Within the rigid orthodox boundaries of Victorian England, he was quite the party animal. If only there were more teachers like him nowadays!īut, Argyll Robertson was not just some eye doctor who wielded the scalpel with precision and towered over his colleagues and contemporaries in stature. In fact, in today’s publish-or-perish world, there are pre-med students with more publications than him! He was more of a teacher and believed in the power of the demonstrated lecture as a didactic tool over pages of erudite expression. He was one of the most respected surgeons of his day. He chaired the Ophthalmologic Society of England for 12 straight years from 1883. ![]() This remarkable physician was also the Royal Ophthalmologist to none other than Queen Victoria herself (1886). The true spirit of science! (OK, I can already see the IRBs and IECs looking daggers at me!)Īnother important contribution of Argyll Robertson was the fact that he also was one of the first physicians to describe the condition of Ocular Loaiasis. Oh, and the real cool thing about the whole business was that he had experimented upon himself and had found the miotic properties of the compound. His preceptor, von Graefe, used physostigmine to perform iridectomy in a patient in the very same year he discovered it. ![]() He correctly fore told that this group of chemicals were going to become of paramount importance in the treatment of ocular conditions. One of the largest came in 1863, he discovered the miotic properties of Physostigmine from the calabar bean. It was not the norm of the day since most people chose to go into Medicine or Surgery rather than solely in the then rather limited field of Ophthalmology.īesides this eponymous condition, which had guaranteed him immortality in medical circles, he has had several other important contributions to the discipline. ![]() The son of a surgeon with special interest in Ophthalmology, he completed his medical education at the very young age of 20 years and immediately forayed into the field of Ophthalmology. He was one of the first surgeons to specialize exclusively in Ophthalmology. This condition was named after Douglas Moray Argyll Robertson, who published 2 papers to describe this condition in 1869. Now to come to the interesting parts of the Eponym for the condition. In general, pupils that “accommodate but do not react” are said to show light-near dissociation. This condition is colloquially referred to as the “Whore’s Eye” because of the association with tertiary syphilis and because of the convenient mnemonic that, like a prostitute, they “accommodate but do not react” also because the pupils are “small and irregular.” They are a highly specific sign of neurosyphilis. Argyll Robertson pupils (“AR pupils”) are bilateral small pupils that constrict when the patient focuses on a near object (they “accommodate”), but do not constrict when exposed to bright light (they do not “react” to light). ![]()
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