Infantile Fundus Lesions in Relation to Mental Capacity

Developmental abnormalities and other congenital defects of the eye often remain unsuspected in the early weeks or months of life because newborn babies do not as a rule undergo'detailed intraocular examination. For research purposes a clinic may go out of its way to scrutinize the ocular fundi and media in every infant, but in ordinary out-patient and office practice the need seldom arises. We know that the macula is not fully developed at birth, even in healthy full-term children, so that nurses, parents, and others in close contact with infants do not usually feel perturbed about a baby's blank stare-unless that vacant look persists beyond the time when a healthy baby should be taking in his en- tourage with a purposive stare. If later on we discover a bilateral macular coloboma or any other fundus lesions ample to account for defective sight we can as a rule tell the parents that nobody could have prevented the trouble, and that no treatment, however promptly it had been given, could have made the eyes normal.