Emergencies in ophthalmic practice / by A. Maitland Ramsay.

  • Andrew Maitland Ramsay
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Emergencies in ophthalmic practice / by A. Maitland Ramsay. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    being either too optimistic or too pessimistic. In the former case, knowing nothing of the conditions, he may assure the patient that all will be right in a day or two and may thereby arouse hopes that can never be fulfilled. On the other hand, by being too pessimistic, he may, with equal ignorance of the case but perhaps more regard for his own reputation, occasion much needless suffering by giving a grave prognosis when, with fuller knowledge, he might have been able to do much to relieve the patient’s sufferings and to quiet the alarm of all concerned. Unguarded expressions of medical opinion are always to be deprecated and can be avoided only when a case is approached with full professional knowledge and with the care that comes of deliberate consideration, for it must be admitted that want of care is just as common a cause of mistakes in practice as is want of knowledge. If a general practitioner does not feel confident in his own ability to make a thorough diagnosis he ought to have no hesitation in expressing a wish for aid by consultation ; and when he is in doubt he ought never to accept the responsibility of advising the patient to wait for a few days on the chance that the difficulty will pass over. An opinion begotten of hope rather than based on experience is always baneful, for it lulls a patient into a false sense of security and does irremediable harm by allowing time to be wasted which fuller knowledge and larger experience might have used to effect a cure. As it is to the family medical adviser that patients as a rule appeal in the first instance for aid, and as the fate of a damaged eye depends in most instances on the treatment first adopted, I propose in this lecture to try to offer some guidance as to the best methods of dealing with the com- moner emergencies in ophthalmic practice. It is, of course, impossible to refer to every form of accident that may occur, for to do so would require a complete course of lectures on diseases and injuries of the eye. Personal experience, however, even though it be limited, is always of value and so I shall try to present in a connected form notes of some cases of emergency that have occurred in my own practice Before 1 do so, however, let me urge one important