Non-Organic Visual Loss

The non-organic nature of signs and symptoms in some patients has been recognized for almost 4000 years by the ancient Egyptians. Hippocrates coined the term hysteria as he believed that the misplacement of a wandering uterus was responsible for such manifestations. Other terms were given by famous physicians like Jean-Martin Charcot (La belle indiffrence), Sigmund Freud (conversion syndrome), or Jozef Jules Franois Flix Babinsky (pithiatism). Homers description of a warrior who lost sight upon seeing an enemy may have been the first case of non-organic visual loss (NOVL). (Culpin ) However, the first report of NOVL in the medical literature was written by Albrecht von Graefe in 1855 who described two techniques to demonstrate the non-organicity of visual loss in some patients.