Lectures on diseases of the eye / by Charles Bell Taylor.

  • Bell Taylor
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on diseases of the eye / by Charles Bell Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/106 page 14
    Hemarhs after operation.—I do not know, gentlemen, whether you are aware of the fact, but statistics tell us that a prepond- erating fatality has always attended operations for cataract upon the left eye. This is doubtless due to the greater difficulty of operating upon the left eye, a difficulty which I have endeavoured to obviate by using a bent knife, which I devised some years ago, and which you noticed, although the left eye was selected for operation, was, in the case of the male patient, held in the right hand. With this knife I would rather operate upon the left eye than upon the right, since the natural tendency of the eyeball to roll inwards, to be pushed before the knife, is in your favour if the left eye is selected for operation, and against you if the right is the subject of extraction. As those of you who were near enough to see remarked, the iris in this case persistently prolapsed after removal of the lens, and I was therefore compelled to excise a portion for safety's sake. With this exception the operation was completed without mis- adventure. In the female patient, the tendency of the iris to fold over the edge of the blade of the knife was, as you noticed, evaded by a tour de main, and the wound so managed as to form a small flap situated in the upper segment of the corneo- sclerotic junction; the capsule was then punctured, the lens extruded, and the operation completed, leaving, in this case, a central and circular pupil. I shall speak directly as to the local anaesthetic which was used and the antiseptic precautions which were adopted throughout; before doing so, however, permit me to answer one or two questions which have been addressed to me. I have been asked whether the male patient's great age did not contra-indicate operation ? whether the patients would not have been better for some preliminary treatment ? and whether it would not have been desirable to
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