Douglas Moray Cooper Lamb Argyll Robertson

Douglas Moray Cooper Lamb Argyll Robertson was born in 1837. He was a Scottish ophthalmologist and surgeon. He was also president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. He described a symptom of neurosyphilis that affects eye pupils, a condition later known as “Argyll Robertson pupil”. In 1869, he published an article describing the pupils’ unusual reactions to light and accommodation in patients with tabes dorsalis (syphilis that affects the spinal cord). In his study, he describes small pupils that did not contract in response to light stimulation, but contracted normally during accommodation and convergence. The “pupil of Argyll Robertson” has become an important signal for the diagnosis of syphilis affecting the central nervous system.