Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Lectures of the diseases of the eye / by Charles Bell Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)
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![G3 Cette operation [neurectomy] doit done etre consideree comme un nioyen preventif dont l'application constant est inevitable aussi long temps que Ton ne peut determiner avec certitude les cas de ce genre que resteraient toujours a l'abri de l'ophtlialmie sympathetique. You bad better let me remove tbe eye, I sometimes say to patients who come to tbis institution. Are you going to take it out ? Yes. Sball you put it in again? No. I'll come again on Tbursday. Sucb patients never do come again; and I bave a painful recollec- tion of two fine fellows, now absolutely blind, wbo lost tbeir sigbt tbrougb tbis insane dread of baving tbeir eyes took out. If, bowever, you call tbem back and promise to restore tbe eyeball, as in tbe operation for neurectomy, tbey will not besitate a moment. It is not tbe permanent loss of sigbt— already gone—of one eye wbicb tbey dread so mucb ; it is tbe sacrifice of tbe globe itself wbicb tbey regard witb sucb very natural borror. Another advantage is tbat in young persons you are enabled to preserve a tenant for the socket, and so prevent comparative atrophy of tbe orbit and tbat side of the face, which forms so distressing a feature in some of these cases. Again, it enables us to render a stump insensible and fit to receive an artificial eye. For instance, I recently operated on a lady for cataract in the left eye, who had lost her right through a similar operation performed elsewhere. I was fortunate enough to succeed in restoring her sight, and when she could see she naturally wished to improve her appearance by wearing an artificial substitute. I said, You must let me remove the remains of the lost eyo. Never, she exclaimed; so I divided the optic and ciliary nerves. Now sbe is able to wear an artificial eye, motion is as perfect as in tbe modern operation of exenteration, and she looks](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21641304_0065.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
