A manual of the diseases of the eye, or, Treatise on ophthalmology / by S. Littell ; revised and enlarged, by Hugh Houston.

Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of the diseases of the eye, or, Treatise on ophthalmology / by S. Littell ; revised and enlarged, by Hugh Houston. 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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    most generally occasions intense inflammation, which ex- tends to the whole globe of the eye^, and requires the most energetic antiphlogistic treatment^ which most frequently preserves the normal form of the eye, and even vision itself. See p. 10.] Treatment.—In all these cases, after the removal of the cause, attention should be chiefly directed, by the employ- ment of rigid antiphlogistic measures, to the prevention and cure of inflammation. In the performance of surgical operations, when the patient has been previously prepared by a restricted diet, saline laxatives, and, in plethoric habits, by venesection; and where active treatment is adopted on the first appearance of inflammation, it rarely proceeds so far, in healthy constitutions, as materially to injure the eye; but under other circumstances, the best directed exertions may be unavailing. Violent blows some- times produce rupture of the cornea, more frequently of the sclerotica, and this may happen without lesion of the conjunctiva ; or the choroid and retina may be separated from their connexions, and otherwise injured, the external tunics preserving their continuity. Amaurosis is a frequent consequence of such accidents, and may likewise be occasioned by the irritation of foreign substances which have penetrated within the eye ; injuries of the latter kind are sometimes followed by atrophy of the eyeball, in consequence of the destruction of its secre- tory powers by the subsequent inflammation, and at others by an irritable condition of the organ. [ Cataract is also a common result]. Dislocation of the globe [ophthalmoptose] is a serious occurrence, the muscles being more or less extensively lacerated, and vision often entirely destroyed. The protruded organ should be replaced with as little