THE ARTIFICIAL INDUCTION OF OCULAR HYPERTENSION BY COMPRESSION OF THE JUGULAR VEINS

Abstract

About a year ago, one of my associates at the Knapp Memorial Eye Hospital asked me to watch a very "unusual occurrence." He applied the Schiötz tonometer to one of the eyes of a patient suspected of being glaucomatous, and it indicated six divisions on the tonometer scale. (The weight used was 7.⁵) Within a few seconds, the indicator moved to division 5 and then to 4. He could not understand the meaning of this hardening of the eyeball under the weight of the tonometer constantly applied to it when he knew that usually the opposite (a softening) happens under such circumstances. A glance at the patient's face gave a satisfactory explanation. The patient was sitting with his head bent far back so as to have the eyes look straight up; his collar, tightly stretched around his neck, exerted a mild strangulation of the jugular veins, and the