Optic atrophy after small-pox.

VACCINIA virus is now regarded as " pantropic"; Murti and Shrivastav (1957), in their studies on the behaviour of variola virus and one strain of vaccinia virus, observed that the infection became generalized after inoculation on the skin of the rabbit with vaccinia virus, and that lesions of varying severity were seen in the lungs, heart, liver, and kidney, as well as the skin. It is only to be expected, therefore, that vaccinia virus should attack the nervous system, such affections being usually described as "complications". Vaccinia can produce serious attacks of encephalitis and encephalomyelitis leading to paraplegia and hemiplegia. Brain (1955) quotes Mackintosh and Scarff(I 927-28) as showing that these nervous manifestations simulate those of post-vaccinial encephalomyelitis, including transient papilloedema of the optic nerve. Much has been written about small-pox lesions of the eyelid, conjunctiva, and cornea, but uveal, retinal, and optic nerve complications are considered to be rare (Thygeson, 1951). Here we report a case of optic nerve atrophy in a child, which was the sole ocular or nervous lesion to follow an attack of small-pox.