Lectures on the parts concerned in the operations on the eye, and on the structure of the retina : delivered at the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital, Moorfields, June 1847 : to which are added, a paper on the vitreous humor; and also a few cases of ophthalmic disease / by William Bowman.
- Sir William Bowman, 1st Baronet
- Date:
- 1849
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Lectures on the parts concerned in the operations on the eye, and on the structure of the retina : delivered at the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital, Moorfields, June 1847 : to which are added, a paper on the vitreous humor; and also a few cases of ophthalmic disease / by William Bowman. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![they are rarely seen in such opacities. In the healthy lens they are in reality too near together, and too irregular, to be detected without a glass. The triple divergence from the axis can, even then, only be recognised for a short distance, beyond which the planes seem to diverge and branch without any attempt at geometrical precision. We cannot, therefore, wonder that an opacity, spreading from the centre of the surface of the lens, and which consists of broad, ill— shapen streaks, should fail to disclose the radiation of the mesial planes : although it seems highly probable that its seat is, primarily and essentially, rather in the edges of those planes than in the fibres themselves.'54' 4. In the lenticular cataract of adults, the glistening, silky, fibril- lation of the lens may be often seen; but you will fail, even in the best-marked of these cases, to discover, with the naked eye, any thing like regularity in the mode in which the fibres pass off from the central region. Before becoming acquainted with the complex arrangement of the planes of the human lens, I could not satisfy myself why the triple line of the mammalian lens should be unseen; but the actual complexity is a sufficient reason. . It explains, too, the appearances of many cases of opacity of the body of the lens, where the fibrous texture is in general obvious enough, but where, towards the centre., an amorphous, indefinable obscurity exists. * Since this, lecture was delivered, I have seen two cases (one under tlie ©care of Mr. Dixon) in which the opacity ra- diated from the centre in clearly-defined branching lines, corresponding exactly in character with the branchings of the central planes. The opacity was confined to the „ . . . i-i.T. surface of the lens, and did not dip in the Cataractous lens, m which the ,. .. „ ., , .., ,., .5 opacity follows some of the direction of the planes; neither did it occupy divisions of the central planes all the divisions of the central planes. It of the lens, and some of the was accompanied, in both cases, with other fibres at the circumference. streaks of it at the border of the ]ens> The pupil dilated by atropine. ., ,, . „,, „, Magnified two diameters. evidently in some of the fibres.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21043140_0089.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
