The pathologic results of dextrocularity and sinstrocularity : read at the meeting of the American Ophthalmological Society, held in Atlantic City, July 13-14, 1904 / by George M. Gould.
- Gould, George Milbrey, 1848-1922.
- Date:
- 1904
Licence: In copyright
Credit: The pathologic results of dextrocularity and sinstrocularity : read at the meeting of the American Ophthalmological Society, held in Atlantic City, July 13-14, 1904 / by George M. Gould. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![[] troiis person, but there has been produced much misery by the fool- ish attempt to create ambidexterity.^ If by ocular disease, ametropia, accident, etc., the dextromanual arc compelled to be sinistrocular, the pathologic results which may flow from this interference, or reversal, of the natural order, become of exceptional interest to the ophthalmologist. That these path- ologic results exist I have no doubt, and have repeatedly demon- strated in the persons of actual patients. I suspect that they exist in at least 10 per cent, of all patients, and no case whatever can be t]-eated wholly irrespective of the fact of dextrocular or sinistrocular function. For purposes of naming and clarifying the ideas to be presented, let us call the right eye of right-handed persons, and the left eye of left-handed persons, the dominant eye. The caution must be em- phasized that the hand which does the writing unconsciously or preferentially dictates the location of the speech center, and the true condition of dextromanuality or sinistromanuality. It hardly needs the saying tliat the accidents of ocular diseases, keratitis, fundus lesions, cataract, liigh ametropia, heterophoria, amblyopia, etc., may put out of fimction, or threaten to do so, the primary—that is, the naturall}^, logically and neurologically—domi- nant eye, and thus the eye of the other side must be used as a make- sliift and educated to become the secondarily dominant one. The older the age at which tliis occurs the greater the difficulty, the more of a tragedy will it be to the patient. There arise a hundred problems. I shall here allude, and most briefly, to but a few of these: 1. In all operative procedures there should be an exceptional striving to save the dominant eye. I do not believe in operations for this purpose, but if only one eye can be straightened and made func- tional in strabismus, by all odds let it be the dominant one. The strabismus of a naturally dominant eye will be more easily cured than that of the non-dominant one. In double convergent squint the dominant eye should be the one first chosen to save. In certain cases of cataract extraction a similar rule should be followed. 2. In inflammatory diseases there should be the same solicitude, subject is treated more extensively in an articio pubiished in PoDular Science Monthly, August, 1904.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22409142_0007.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
