Detachment of corneal epithelium / by J. Acworth Menzies.

  • Menzies, James Acworth, 1869-1921
Date:
[1902]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Detachment of corneal epithelium / by J. Acworth Menzies. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

    2/8 page 2
    further serves to give a clear presentment of the subject. My own attention was first called to the matter m 1899 by a case which was published in the British Medical Journal« in February, 1900. The patient was a woman who had suffered for five years, and who dated her trouble from a blow with a cricket ball. She had been under treatment without avail, and her life was made miserable by the fact that any movement of the lid over the cornea gave her acute pain. There was no foreign body, and it was only with great diffi- culty that 1 made out a ruffling of the epithelium at one spot. Bandaging was of no use, and ultimately I scraped the diseased area thoroughly and obtamed a permanent cure. Since that tune I have been enlightened by the papers to which I have referred, and others, and also have met with five other cases and one doubtful one. I will describe very briefly the symptoms, causation, : pathology and treatment of the condition, and give short notes of the six typical cases I have seen. Symptoms.—In aU cases there are recurring attacks of pain, but there are two main types : (i) In the first of these the attacks usually occur on opening the eye in the early morning or during the night, or it may be on rubbing the eye in a certain way. In this form the duration of the pain is brief, and in the intervals the surface of the cornea may appear normal, or at the most may show a tiny grey speck. But even then Szili has shown that it is possible to raise a fold ot epithelium with forceps. (2) Of the second type the case which I have related may be taken as an example. At one spot is a patch of epithelium resembling a collapsed blister, and the movements of the lid over this acting on the nerve endings give rise to the feel- ing of a foreign body being present. The epithelium may be clear or it may be opaque, and, so far as my
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3