Historical Issues of Optic neuritis and Sensory Disorder in Persian Traditional Medicine

Although there are no clinical findings that are exclusive to multiple sclerosis (MS), but some are highly specific of the disease. Optic neuritis (ON) and Sensory symptoms are common initial features of MS (1, 2). Optic neuritis is an inflammation of the optic nerve that usually first occurs in young and in many cases are associated with multiple sclerosis (MS), also can occur in isolation. In cases involving multiple sclerosis, ON is often the first exhibition of chronic demyelinating process so that 15 to 75% of female patients primarily presenting with ON eventually develop MS (3-7). Optic neuritis usually presented as acute or subacute unilateral eye pain with a relative afferent pupillary defect (Marcus Gunn pupil) (8). Sensory symptoms are generally termed as numbness, tingling, pins-and-needles, tightness, coldness, or swelling of the limbs or trunk (1, 2). The earliest references to eye diseases and optic nerve dysfunction as a mechanism for vision loss are found in some Persian Medicine texts by Avicenna, Gorgani and Rhazes according to himself and Galen, Hippocrates and others (9-11). They described eye’s disorders in perception, motion, and involving both and referred to inflammation of the optic nerve and various affections of the optic nerve, including those resulting from “warmth, cold, humidity, and dryness” (12) and the afferent pupillary defect. They explained that we could detect pain and heaviness, “swelling” of the optic nerve. All of them describe eye diseases in the special chapter of their textbooks or some physicians as Hunain Ibn Is-Haq and Ali Ibn Isa al-Kahhal in the major textbooks of ophthalmology (8).