A symposium on the extraction of senile cataract : being a complete report of the papers and discussions presented before the Chicago Ophthalmological Society, Nov. 20, 1911.

  • Woodruff, Harry W.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A symposium on the extraction of senile cataract : being a complete report of the papers and discussions presented before the Chicago Ophthalmological Society, Nov. 20, 1911. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Gerstein Science Information Centre at the University of Toronto, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Gerstein Science Information Centre, University of Toronto.

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    oculists as a class lag behind their confreres of every other spe- cialty in the matter of surgical cleanliness. The reasons for this are apparently not far to seek. Many, perhaps most of them, do not have the advantage of that training in a general surgical clinic without which it is very difficult to secure a thorough grounding in this important department of their work. On the other hand, a knowledge of the practical impossibility of completely sterilizing certain parts .of the field of operation, and of the relatively great resisting powers which the ocular tissues possess, breeds a laxness that readily passes into actual uncleanliness. Still, the facts of asepsis are so well etablished and are so often brought to the attention of the sur- geon, both as undergraduate and practitioner, that tiiere is no excuse for negligence or for partial measures, which are not only illogical, but because of our imperfect knowledge of infection, apt to be dangerous. We should rather, as Czermak and Elschnig point out, accept the favorable local conditions which Nature has pro- vided, not as an excuse for greater laxity, but as a stimulus to achieve a fuller measure of success in our work; and unquestion- ably the practice of ophthalmology will be most rapidly advanced by a spirit of open-mindedness, which speedily adopts every sound procedure indicated by our developing science.—ED.]