DURING the past fourteen years I have studied the eyegrounds of approximately 2,500 women suffering from hypertension during pregnancy. In two previous reports1 the observations made on some of these patients were analyzed and an attempt was made to correlate the changes in the eyegrounds with the degree of toxemia. It was found that the frequency and degree of such changes more closely followed the severity of hypertension, and consequently the toxemia, than any other single laboratory or clinical sign. The one outstanding and consistently reliable change observed in the eyegrounds was the degree of general and localized spastic constriction of the retinal arterioles.
ANATOMY OF THE RETINAL ARTERIOLES
Knowledge of the structure of the walls of the retinal arterioles helps one to understand better the local manifestations of angiospasm. The central artery in the optic nerve has the same histologic characteristics in microscopic sections as arteries of similar