A practical treatise on the diseases of the eye / by William Mackenzie ; to which is prefixed an anatomical introduction explanatory of a horizontal section of the human eyeball by Thomas Wharton Jones.

Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical treatise on the diseases of the eye / by William Mackenzie ; to which is prefixed an anatomical introduction explanatory of a horizontal section of the human eyeball by Thomas Wharton Jones. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    SECTION VI ENCYSTED TUMOUR IN THE LACRYMAL GLAND. This disease appears to liave been for the first time accurately described by Professor Schmidt, under the appellation of glandula lacryinalis hxjdatoidea} It certainly consists of a collection of thin fluid in the situation of the superior portion of the lacryinal gland. This fluid Schmidt supposed to be tears, and the cyst, in which it collects, to be originally nothing more than one of the cells of the cellular mem- brane, serving to hold together the acini or grains of which the gland is composed. Whether this is really a lacrymal tumour, or merely a cyst situated in tlie lacrymal gland, or at least closely connected with it, is, in a practical point of view, a matter, perhaps, of little consequence. That it is a rare disease may be concluded from the fact, that Schmidt relates only two cases of it; and that even Beer’s vast experi- ence had brought only three under his observation.In one of Beer’s cases, the diagnosis became completely evident only after death. In the tumour, he found a small quantity of fluid, which he does not i hesitate to call tears, and which was thin, clear, and sharp and saltish to the taste. In his second case, he opened the tumour during life; the fluid discharged was yellowish like serum, but so acrid, that it immediately caused a small blister wdien applied to the tongue. In Beer’s third case, he was merely consulted in the commencement of the disease. ; Schmidt’s own hypothesis of the origin of the cyst is quite incon- sistent with the assumption, that this disease is at all analogous to ; the entozoa, knowm under the name of hydatids. He supposes that a single cell of the cellular membrane, connecting the acini of the . gland, becomes distended, and filled w ith tears, and that this is ^ the origin of the disease. It is not easy to explain how this cell should afterw'ards become detached, so as to form a cyst, which may be sometimes extracted, as if quite free from the surrounding parts; for to tell us, as Schmidt has done, that the distended cell presses aside the surrounding cellular membrane, so as to form a sort of capsule for itself, and that between this capsule and the proper 8 membrane of the cell an interstitial fluid is afterw'ards effused, is to < indulge entirely in conjecture. Symptoms. The development of an encysted tumour in the lacry- mal gland is, in some cases at least, very rapid ; and its consequences - not merely distressing, but dangerous. One of the most striking symptoms attending this tumour, is protrusion of the eye. It is < pushed forward from the orbit, and inward, towards the nose. I i have already had occasion to mention that protrusion of the eye is f called exophlhnlmos, if there is no other change than merely the f change of ])lace ; but that if there be inflammatory disorganiza- tion of the whole globe of the eye, along with the protrusion, tliis state is called exop/dhahnia.