The ancients as far back as Hippocrates, were aware that blows on eyebrows or skull were followed at times by immediate monocular blindness.
Hippocrates wrote that amaurosis sometimes follows wounds inflicted on eyebrows or other parts of head.
During the past hundred years medical writers alluded to the possibility of sudden blindness following injuries of the skull. The etiology was in doubt; Beer's theory being most in vogue, viz.: that the injury to the supra orbital nerve caused the blindness; to this, later writers added the infra orbital nerve as a probable cause. Lawrence gives in his book four cases in detail, and remarks that although the fact appeared to be well established, no one furnished the history of any cases, referring especially to Beer and Wardrop, both of whom had written on this subject. Since Lawrence's time there has been no lack of recorded cases, but it remained for R.