Diseases and injuries of the eye : their medical and surgical treatment / by George Lawson.

  • George Lawson
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diseases and injuries of the eye : their medical and surgical treatment / by George Lawson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    man made a rapid recovery without any impairment of tlie sight of the eye. In February, 1869,1 extracted from a patient, ast. twenty- eight, the breech of a muzzle-loading gnn, which had been impacted for twelve years in the right frontal sinus and Tipper part of the nose. The following is the history of the case:— The man Gtatecl that twelve years previously his gun burst whilst shooting wild fowl, and produced a severe wound between the eyes, and many smaller ones on his face. He was laid up for four months, during which time both eyes became inflamed and the sight of the left was nearly destroyed. He was attended through his illness by several medical men, but thev never found, nor did they appear to suspect the presence of a foreign body. He first detected something loose in the nostril about two years and a half before he came under my care. When admitted into the Middlesex Hospital a deep scar was seen between the frontal sinuses, and the upper part of the right side of the nose was swollen. There was an offensive discharge from the right nos- tril, and the right eye was more prominent than the left. On examination with the finger in the nostril a hard and moveable body was felt to be lodged beneath the scar and in the upper part of the right nasal cavity, and from the metallic touch it gave to the probe I concluded it to be a portion of Fig. 81. the gun-barrel. I first tried to remove this hard mass with a pair of strong for- ceps introduced through the nostril; but failing to accomplish this, I laid open the right cavity of the nares by an incision carried through the nostril along the fold which forms the line of demarcation be- tween the cartilage of the nose and face. The piece of iron was then seized with the forceps, and, alter considerable traction, removed; it weighed an ounce and a quarter, and was covered with a thin layer of rust. The wound was united with two fine sutures. The patient recovered without a bad symptom, and in a week left the hospital. The woodcut (fig. 81) represents the actual size and shape of the screw breech of the gun. Treatment of Foreign Bodies in the Orbit.—Whenever it can be clearly established that a foreign body is im- pacted in the orbit, the treatment is to endeavour to remove it as soon as possible. To this rule, however, there are exceptions; and these are, when the_foreign body is a small shot, or a fine scale of metal which may have flown ofi' from a i-ivet and passed into the orbit without injury to the eje. The almost impossibility of