Hints on ophthalmic out-patient practice / by Charles Higgens.

  • Higgens, Charles, 1846-1920.
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hints on ophthalmic out-patient practice / by Charles Higgens. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    at night for sleep ; we order some simple oint- ment to be smeared on the edges and surfaces of the lids—so as to keep them constantly greasy —and direct the greatest cleanliness to be ob- served. The treatment must be steadily persevered in until the discharge becomes sensibly dimi- nished in quantity, and altered in quality, and may be gradually left off as improvement takes place. In mild cases of purulent ophthalmia in older persons, the frequent use of alum lotion with some ointment smeared on the edges of the eye- lids at bedtime will suffice for a cure; but in the severer forms, and especially in gonorrhoea! ophthalmia/' we must have recourse to much more energetic treatment. At the patient's first visit the conjunctiva should be carefully brushed over with solid nitrate of silver, and then washed with salt and water. We should apply four or five, or more leeches to the temples, order the eyes to be constantly bathed with alum lotion, grs. x to 3J of water; the lotiorr may with advantage be iced, and a bag of ice laid upon the closed lids during the intervals at which the lotion is applied; a good purge should be administered at first, but when the bowels have been well cleared out,.