Department of Neurology, Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Aylesbury, United Kingdom.
Cephalalgia. 2024 Mar;44(3):3331024231209326. doi: 10.1177/03331024231209326.
Visual snow syndrome comprises a whole-field static-like visual disturbance, with increased awareness of entopic phenomena, an inability to suppress the 'just seen' and photophobia. Visual snow syndrome is often associated with other problems such as headache, tinnitus, and anxiety. The earliest reported case of a patient experiencing symptoms consistent with visual snow syndrome dates only to 1995. This paper seeks to find patterns of experience in the medical literature of the past that are reminiscent of visual snow syndrome, to challenge the view that it is in any sense a novel disorder. Descriptions of subjective visual sensations such as experienced by patients suffering from visual snow syndrome were sought in treatises, textbooks and other literature generated by leading figures in 19th-century ophthalmology, physiology and physics.
While retrospective diagnosis of modern illness categories in historical medical literature is an enterprise fraught with pitfalls, it is nonetheless possible to see patterns of experience in the 19th-century medical literature that are strongly reminiscent of visual snow syndrome.
视觉雪综合征包括全视野静态样视觉障碍，伴有对内生现象的感知增强、无法抑制“刚看到的”和畏光。视觉雪综合征常与头痛、耳鸣和焦虑等其他问题相关。最早有记录的患者出现符合视觉雪综合征症状的病例仅可追溯到 1995 年。本文旨在寻找过去医学文献中与视觉雪综合征相似的体验模式，以质疑其在任何意义上都是一种新出现的疾病的观点。在 19 世纪眼科学、生理学和物理学的领军人物的论著、教科书和其他文献中，寻找描述视觉雪综合征患者所经历的主观视觉感觉的内容。
虽然在历史医学文献中对现代疾病类别进行回顾性诊断存在诸多陷阱，但仍有可能在 19 世纪的医学文献中看到与视觉雪综合征强烈相似的体验模式。
