Lectures of the diseases of the eye / by Charles Bell Taylor.

  • Bell Taylor
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

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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    retina? I do not think so. The lens is apt to rise again, or act with all the pernicious influence of a foreign body in the vitreous chamber ; so that, although I am not at all disposed to deny that such an operation may be occasionally successful, the risk is too great, and I should not dream of attempting it in either of these cases.* It is clear, therefore, gentlemen, that our only resource is extraction. What is the best method of performing extraction ? In order that you may appreciate this question it will be necessary to glance at the history of the operation, which may be said to have commenced in 1752; for although, as the quotation from Pliny just cited proves, there can be no doubt that a method of extraction was known to the ancients, it was not until that date, when Daviel presented his classic memoir to the French Academy, Sur une nouvelle Methode de guerir la Cataract par l'Extraction, that the actual removal of the lens from the eyeball assumed its proper place as a recognized operation in contemporary surgery. Daviel operated while seated himself and facing his patient, who also occupied a chair on a lower level. He used a lance-shaped knife, and incised the lower half of the circumference of the cornea, delivering the lens through the natural pupil. When success- ful, the flap operation, as it is called, left nothing to be desired; but fifteen eyes in a hundred were irrevocably lost, and twenty more so damaged that it is a matter for special wonder tbat no serious attempt at improvement was made until 1860, wlien Herr von Graefe, the celebrated professor of Berlin, • In illustration of the occasional success attending depression, I may remark that some years ago I extracted cataracts from both eyes for an eminent practitioner of medicine, who had so successfully operated by couch- ing, as he termwl it, upon his own brother (a clergyman) that his patient was able to resume his duties as rector of a large parish.
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