The progress of ophthalmology : a sketch / by D. Argyll Robertson, M.D.

  • Douglas Argyll Robertson
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The progress of ophthalmology : a sketch / by D. Argyll Robertson, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    recourse at the present day. Although ignorant of tlie precise seat of cataract, the nature ot the disease otherwise appears to have been very well understood, and the performance of an operation for the removal of the opaque matter from the axis of vision seems to have been of frequent occurrence. Rules were laid down by which the cataracts favourable for operation might be distinguished from those in which a good result is less to be expected. A strict regimen was carefully enjoined for some time prior to the operation ; for Celsus recommends that the patient should take a small amount of food, and drink only water for some days before the operation, and during the last twenty-four hours should abstain from all food,—an antiphlogistic system that would meet with but little favour in the present day. He also carefully considers the details of the operation, which, in every respect, correspond to those of depression as prac- tised before the method by reclination was introduced. Should the cataract resume its former position, he recommends it to be cut to pieces, and states that thus it can be more readily displaced. From tliis time the study of diseases of the eye appears to have been almost entirely neglected, until the seventeenth and commence- ment of the eighteenth century, when we find the department in the hands of itinerant quacks, who reaped a rich harvest from the pos- session of some supposed specifics. They were at first content to trumpet forth their own fame from the stages in front of the booths in which they practised; but, later, they circulated a knowledge of their powers and achievements by means of laudatory pamphlets, not unlike those issued by some irregular practitioners of our own day. Indeed, with very few exceptions, it was not the advance- ment of their department of medicine, but the spreading of their own fame, that they were most anxious to promote; and, as a natural consequence, pretensions the most extravagant, and a spirit of opposition to the profession at large the most unbecoming, charac- terized the productions of the oculists of that period. Their writ- ings, indeed, evidence that they were continually engaged in professional squabbles alike mischievous and undignified. The following epigram from the preface to a treatise on Cataract and Glaucoma, by Woolhouse, published in 1717, is a specimen of the manner in which their works were made the vehicles of abuse and recrimination:— Quid sunt falsa novis systeraata fulta columnis ? Mentis abortivum sunt titubanbantis opus. Brisseus, Antonius nobis dant talia, docto Ut sibi concilient nomen in orbe novum : Csecutire tamen libet his; ast, orbis ocellus, Scit csecis visum reddere Wolhusius. This same preface — which, however, it is but right to say, was not written by Mr Woolhouse, but by a Dr Christopher le Cerf—contains, moreover, the following characteristic laudatory passage:— Quis autem nescit Woolhusium ab adolescentia sua