A guide to the practical study of diseases of the eye : with an outline of their medical and operative treatment / by James Dixon.

  • Dixon, James, 1813-1896.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A guide to the practical study of diseases of the eye : with an outline of their medical and operative treatment / by James Dixon. 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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    taken from the arm as will flow from the vein, and the evacuation should be repeated as soon as the state of the circulation will allow us to get more. This practice is enforced by the following quotation from Bacot's Treatise on Syphilis :— These are cases which defy all the usual etiquette of regular and ceremonious visits. If we wish to save our patient from the destruction of his vision, we must scarcely depart from his bedside until the inflammatory symptoms are controlled. The lancet must be hardly ever out of our reach, for if ever there was a disease in which blood may be taken away without limitation, it is this. Mr. Waedrop's statement is still more startling :— The only case [of Gonorrhoeal Ophthal- mia] he had seen, in which the eye was saved, was that of a young woman, in whom venesection was repeated as often as blood could be got from the arm. She lost 170 ounces in a few days, and looked as if every drop of blood had been drained from her body; the skin having nearly the hue of a wax candle. Can we wonder that thousands of persons, with long as it could be borne. In the evening the pain in the eye had become worse. He was bled again. On the following morning the swelling of the lids was greatly increased, so that the eye could not be seen, and there was copious yellow discharge ; the night had been passed in severe pain, which entirely prevented sleep. Bleeding was repeated twice more; blood was taken, by cupping, from the back of the neck and the temple, and leeches were applied round the eye in large numbers; but although the free use of purgatives and antiinonials, with low diet, was combined with these measures, no sensible effect was produced in diminishing the violence of the inflammation, or arresting its progress.