The principles and practice of ophthalmic medicine and surgery / By T. Wharton Jones. With one hundred and ten illustrations.

  • Thomas Wharton Jones
Date:
1856
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principles and practice of ophthalmic medicine and surgery / By T. Wharton Jones. With one hundred and ten illustrations. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

    474/520 (page 460)
    The membrane of the aqueous humor is particularly liable to suffer; and iritis on the one hand, and inflammation of the proper substance of the cornea, ending in purulent infiltration, on the other, are not unfrequent complications. Inflammation from abrasion of the cornea. A severe form of inflammation is often met in consequence of abrasion of the cornea, though a similar inflammation often arises from other injuries of the cornea. The patient presents himself to the surgeon with the cornea muddy, the iris discolored, and pupil contracted, with considerable conjunctival and sclerotic injec- tion, such as is seen in catarrho-rheumatic ophthalmia (p. 151, et seq.) These objective symptoms are accompanied by fever, severe circumorbital or temporal pain, aggravated at night, and dimness of vision. If the inflammation be allowed to run on, or if treatment fail to arrest its progress, purulent infiltration of the cornea, hypopyon, and effusion of lymph into the pupil, may take place singly or to- gether. The ultimate result is loss of the eye, either by the burst- ing of the cornea and the formation of staphyloma, or by atrophy. In such a case mercury is our principal remedy, after the abstrac- tion of blood. The extent to which venesection should be carried ought to be carefully regulated by the circumstances of the case; it is not to be dreaded too much on the one hanij, nor, on the other, pushed by repetition, too far. The pupil is to be kept dilated by belladonna lotion or the solution of atropine; and when the pro- gress of the inflammation is arrested, the exhibition of bark, as a general remedy, and the application of the drops of the bichloride of mercury with vinum opii (p. 71) as a local remedy, will power- fully promote the cure. A woman, get. 40, received an injury of the left eye from her husband's finger being thrust into it. On the second day after the surface of the cornea was found abraded, and there was considerable conjunctival, together with some circumcorneal, sclerotic injection. The iris was somewhat discolored and the pupil contracted. The patient complained of great pain in the eye, over the eyebrow, and in the temple, of the same side, and in addition pain still more severe over the eyebrow of the opposite side : the pain shot to the back of the head. Calomel (gr. iij) and Dover's powder (gr. viij) were ordered to be taken at bedtime, and black draught [Inf. Sen. C] next morning; after that, calomel (gr. j) and Dover's powder (gr. ij) three times a day. The belladonna lotion to be used for fomenting the eye with. Under this treatment improvement took place, and I saw nothing