A treatise of the cataract and glaucoma : in which the specific definitions of those two diseases, and the existence of membranous cataracts, are clearly demonstrated. With a plain description of the methods of operating in all circumstances of either distemper ... / compiled from the dictates of Mr. Woolhouse, as taken from him in writing, by one of his pupils.

  • Woolhouse, John Thomas, approximately 1650-1734.
Date:
1745
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise of the cataract and glaucoma : in which the specific definitions of those two diseases, and the existence of membranous cataracts, are clearly demonstrated. With a plain description of the methods of operating in all circumstances of either distemper ... / compiled from the dictates of Mr. Woolhouse, as taken from him in writing, by one of his pupils. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    hinders the communication of waters from one channel to another. In this latter fenfe it expreffes very fully the nature of the di- ftemper we are to defcribe, which is a fo¬ reign heterogenous body, intervening be¬ tween the watry humour and the two dif¬ ferent regions of the eye, and thereby hin¬ dering their communication. Our Englijh Authors, fince the time of William the conqueror, make ufe of an old Norman phrafe to exprefs the operation for the cure of this diftemper, which has been long altogether out of ufe in France. couch the Cataraff is an expreffion that pre¬ vails from cuflom, rather than from any diftincft idea we affix to it in the utter¬ ance [^.] Galen Catara£b of the river Nile, which are alfo called Gat a* dupes (YicLTaS'KTroi) from the loud noife the waters make in their fall down thofe precipices. But when applied to the eye it never meant a defluxion in this fenfe, nor did the molt antient Greek authors ever ufe the word to lignify the diftemper in queftion. It is in the Arabic tranflations, of Hippocrates and Galeny that we firft meet with Cataract, defcenfus aquarum, where it is a fort of equivocal expreftion. But fome of thofe writers call the fame difeafe Gutta Obfcura, in contradiftindtion to the Gutta Senna, another difeafe of the eyes, in which no¬ thing appears in the eye-ball; whereas in the Cataradf the eye-ball is always obftrudted, or JJuiced up^ with an extraneous body of fome different colour from the natural. [£] Perhaps the original phrafe might be, Faire cou¬ ch er ie Qatararf to make the Cataraft fally or to deprefs the Cataract: which operation the French at prefent call abattrc