On the certainty and safety with which the operation for the extraction of a cataract from the human eye may be performed, and on the means by which it is accomplished / With remarks by Captain Kater ... on certain spots discoverable in the human eye.

  • Guthrie, G. J. (George James), 1785-1856
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the certainty and safety with which the operation for the extraction of a cataract from the human eye may be performed, and on the means by which it is accomplished / With remarks by Captain Kater ... on certain spots discoverable in the human eye. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the evening before the operation, either by applying it to the brow, or by instilling it into the eye. The popil being fully dilated (and it is of no trifling importance to know that it ought to be dilated), the eyelids being separated, the eye fixed, and the knife ready, the surgeon commences the incision of the cornea, by introducing it near its edge, or junction with the sclerotica. Some say one quarter of a line, some say half a line, others a line, the intention of all is the same, viz., that it may be near to the edge of the cornea, in order to admit of the opening in it being as large as possible; it ought not nevertheless to touch the sclerotica, as parts of the same kind unite more readily than those which are of a dissimilar nature; and it should also be so much above the plane of the iris, that it will pass readily across without touching it. The upper half of the cornea must be completely divided, and if any thing rather more than less, so that the point of the knife must be entered at nearly the least possible distance below the horizontal, or as it is sometimes pedantically called, the equatorial line of the eye. The manner of entering the point of the knife is disputed. The cornea being composed of several layers, constituting a substance of a certain thick¬ ness, there is some danger of passing the knife between the layers, and not across the anterior cham¬ ber of the eye in front of the iris, if care be not taken that the cornea is fairly penetrated in the very first entering of the knife ; which accident may happen, if the anterior chamber is small, and the iris is close to the cornea. In order to avoid this error,