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.

    7/16 (page 5)
    tot mille catai'actas et Glaucomata depressisse ? Ac proinde ipsum ophthalmiatrorum Europae principera esse ? Perhaps tlie most remarkable of the oculists who practised during the first half of the eighteenth century was the Chevalier John Taylor, whose excursions appear to have extended over almost every part of Europe; he, moreover, published works wherever he went, in English, French, Russian, Danish, etc., in which all his titles are carefully enumerated, and his claims as an oculist set forth in a most exaggerated strain, accompanied by testimonials from many distinguished professors of the age, and by allusions to the fact that several of the most illustrated personages in Eiu-ope had happily passed through his hands. A point much disputed by the oculists of this period was whether cataract consisted in an alteration of the aqueous humour, by which an opaque membrane was formed occluding the pupil, or in an alteration in the structure of the lens. It is obvious that, under the term cataract, those authors included not only opacities of the substance of the lens, but also deposits upon its capsule, and thus the cases of cataract reported to have been cured without operative interference may readily be accoimted for. The operation of couch- ing for cataract seems to have been veiy extensively practised; and spring and autumn were considered the only proper seasons for its performance. Duddell, however, who published a small work on some diseases of the eye, at the commencement of the eighteenth, century, states that the reason why they restricted the operation to those seasons was, because they were the most convenient for the itinerant practitioners of the art to travel in. It further appears, from the following extract from his work, that females prac- tised and obtained a reputation for couching cataracts :— About five years since, I saw a woman in Holborn, by King's Gate Street, that had a dissolution of vitreous humour in her right eye, a nan-owness of the inward chamber, and immobility of the pupil, and half was dilated. The crystalline was opaque, and shnmk in its bigness, pressed against the lower part of the pupil, and was of a whitish gray, by reason of the fibrous parts of its crooked and contracted segments, so that she could not perceive any light with that eye. She asked me if I could do her any good? I told her there was no hopes; for she could not see the least glimmering, because her cataract was accompanied with a gutta Serena, which was perfect. She told me that Mrs Jones, a famous woman for couching of cataracts, would have couched her some years before. I suppose in hopes of success, which quacks are wont to promise themselves, notwithstanding their want of knowledge to conduct them. A curious device for diminishing the amount of light admitted to the eye, had recourse to by DuddeU in a case of cataract on whic;]i he liad operated, consisted of a walnut shell, with a small hole drilled through the centre; this was kept applied over the eye by means of strings fastened to each end.