History of Charles Bonnet Syndrome

Charles Bonnet Syndrome has been known about for a very long time. It was in 1760 that Charles Bonnet documented what was happening to his grandfather in their apartment in Geneva. where Lulin, his grandfather, was seeing the tapestries on the walls changing, carriages riding through the apartment, people in strange costumes and he wrote it all down. He knew that his grandfather had cataracts which in those days were inoperable and he also knew that his grandfather was of sound mind so he assumed this must be something to do with his loss of sight. So a great number of years if not centuries went by before anybody began to think about it. In the 30s and the 60s a couple of doctors wrote a couple of case studies called it Charles Bonney syndrome but it was not until Professor Dominic Fitch in the 1990s began his research into visual hallucinations of all types. Now spin on quite a few years since then and Esme's Umbrella has a restricted fund at Fight for Sight held there for CBS research specifically and that fund was first of all used with obviously money from other charities too for the first piece of Esme's Umbrella's research at Newcastle University where the brain of someone with Charles Bonnet syndrome and sight loss was compared to the brain of someone with sight loss who doesn't develop it because there are some and we need to know why. The result of that research will be out this year. Now we have research at Oxford University, at Cardiff Manchester and also at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital and by medical detection dogs. It is thought that there is a chemical being introduced into the brain before the hallucination appears in a similar way to the chemical that's introduced into the brain before an epileptic seizure. If we can establish exactly that, maybe there will be some medication which can be produced as there is an epilepsy to prevent this happening. But if you are living with Charles Bonnet syndrome it is very good to know that there is research happening, you are not forgotten.