On the management of severe injuries of the eye / by Robert Brudenell Carter.

  • Carter, Robert Brudenell, 1828-1918.
Date:
[1894]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the management of severe injuries of the eye / by Robert Brudenell Carter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    conveyed; and it is impossible to ignore the fact that very many diseases, altogether independent of injury, are apt to appear in the second eye after they have existed for some time in the first. Some of these, as, for example, the keratitis of inherited syphilis, must be regarded as being essentially of constitutional origin; but it is none the less uncertain to what extent the ap- pearance of the malady in the second eye may be due to such an origin, or to direct propagation through some unknown channel from the first. The uncertainty which envelops the causes of sympathetic ophthalmia, extends, almost ne- cessarily, to the period of time during which these causes may be operative; and forbids any positive conclusion as to the period at which the danger either commences or passes away. We know by experience that sympathetic ophthalmia seldom follows injury until at least five or six weeks after it has been inflicted; but the excep- tions to this rule are too numerous for the rule itself to be relied upon as a source of safety. In the case of C. C., for example, related above, only four weeks intervened; and still shorter periods have been placed on record. The safe course would seem to be, if the character of the inflamma- tion justifies any fear of sympathetic mischief, to proceed without delay to such operative procedure as may render its occurrence in the highest degree improbable. It is manifestly impossible to say how soon the causes of infection may depart from the injured eye on a journey which may conduct