A treatise on the surgical diseases of the eye / by H. Haynes Walton.

  • Walton, H. Haynes (Henry Haynes), 1816-1889.
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the surgical diseases of the eye / by H. Haynes Walton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    arrangement for an operation on her child's eye, and at once asked if I used chloroform in such cases. I answered that I did, and, requesting her reason for the question, she said, I have just left the house of Mr. , who has declined to employ it; he declared that, by rolling up my child in a table-cloth, and the aid of two strong assistants, he could manage her, or the most unruly young lady. I told him that her timidity and highly nervous susceptibility made me dread the effect of such an ordeal on her mind. It is curious to read in the work of the talented and ingenious Mr. Wardrop, of the mechanical contrivances he resorted to, in order to quiet the resistance of a blind and deaf boy. Persons have been bled till they fainted, to obtain a passive state. I now pass to those operations on the adult eye ia which we may receive considerable assistance from insensibility. It is evident that here there should be a distraction between such cases as require chloroform merely because of lack of moral courage, and those in which it is of positive advantage under any condition; as in the one, we may leave the choice to the patient, or we may object; in the other, it is our duty to recommend it. It is a fact that, with the fullest consent and greatest determination on the part of a person, indeed with a resolution that could endure a limb to be severed from the body without a groan or a cry, and with every desire to assist the operator, auEesthetic sleep may be advantageous. The majority of operations for artificial pupil, especially where the proceeding is complicated, and requires the use of more than one, or the re- introduction of the same instrument, falls under the latter cate- gory. An eye, for the most part, that requires this aid, is much damaged, and the vitreous humour is too frequently dis- organized ; so that there is needed the greatest steadiness of the eyebaU, with long continuance of a given position, and an absence of much pressure. Now, the movements of the eyebaU may be quite involuntary, and the eyelids wiU twitch, in spite of the most resolute will. But not the least disadvantage of consciousness is the compression that the straight and oblique
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