Functional Disorders of Central Vision.

Functional disorders of vision have al­ ways been of concern and interest to oph­ thalmologists and neurologists. The common patterns of these disorders are well known and it is usual to rely upon the characteristic visual field defects in establishing the diag­ nosis. The occurrence of a central scotoma is often held to indicate organic disease, al­ though Kestenbaum refers to the possibili­ ty of the functional origin of such defects. Walsh 2 states that he has not seen a central scotoma of functional origin, although he quotes Parinaud 3 and de Schweinitz 4 ' 5 who described such cases. Duke-Elder describes scotomas in any part of the visual field ex­ cept the central region as occurring in func­ tional disorders of vision. In this paper we describe four patients each of whom pre­ sented with a disorder of central vision which was considered to be of functional origin.