Extraction of a splinter of wood from the cornea / by David Webster.

  • Webster, David, 1842-1923.
Date:
[1880?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Extraction of a splinter of wood from the cornea / by David Webster. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    extraction of a splinter of wood from the Cornea.* By DAVID WEBSTER, M.D. OF NEW YORK. The patient, a child nearly three years of age, was brought to the Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital on January 26, 1880, by his mother, who gave the following history of his case : About the latter part of July or the first of August, 1879, the child ran against an apronful of wood which a woman was carrying through one of the narrow passages of a tenement house. As soon as the crying, the immediate effect of the collision, had ceased, the mother observed that his right eye was closed. She opened it and examined it as well as she could, but could not find any “ dirt ” in it. The eyeball was red and watery, and very irritable The mother did nothing for the eye for a week or ten days but bathe it with salt and water occasionally. It became worse, how¬ ever, instead of better, and then, by the advice of her friends, she began to apply bread and water poultices at night and sometimes by day. These seemed to soothe the eye to some extent, but it still continued to be more or less inflamed or irritable, and in October she took the child to a physician for the first time. The doctor said the child had an ulcer of the cornea, and ordered atropine eye drops. The physician saw the child only four times, when domestic troubles caused the mother to neglect him. From that time until he came under my observation the eye behaved in a most capricious manner, appearing almost well one day and the next being very much inflamed. When the eye became red, irri¬ table, watery, and sensitive to light, atropine and bathing were * Read before the Medical Society of the State of New York, at its seventy- fourth annual meeting, February 3, 1880. Reprinted from the Archives of Medicine, Vol. iii, No. 2, April, 1880.