60 Dr. Mac Culloch on Fevers. 



ophthalmia, we must content ourselves with stating that it 

 often terminates in opacities of the cornea : while, according 

 to our author, it is this very ophthalmia and no other, which 

 is the common cause of blindness, particularly when that 

 affects one eye only, while even suspected to produce cataract, 

 and very certainly proved to end in amaurosis at times : the 

 very severest cases alone terminating in the total destruction 

 of the eye ; but all these bad effects, according to our author, 

 being the consequences of wrong treatment. Nor must we 

 forget to remark, that it sometimes ajffects the iris ; thus also 

 producing blindness by contracting the pupil. 



Our readers may now conjecture the importance of this par- 

 ticular disease ; and a remark or two from the account of the 

 effects of remedies, for good and evil, will show this in a much 

 stronger light, and evince the very valuable accession which 

 this new view of its nature has made to practical medicine. 



It is clearly ascertained by him, and fully confirmed by Mr. 

 Wardrop's experience, though proceeding on different views 

 and on purely empirical or experimental ones, that where it 

 might be a slight disease, it is aggravated by the usual reme- 

 dies, namely, bloodletting, general or local, blisters, and pur- 

 gatives; and that to the abuse, or even the use of these, must 

 be ascribed the loss of sight from it, which is so common 

 an occurrence. From this wrong treatment also, that which 

 would have been a transitory case becomes inveterate or 

 chronic, so as often to last even through the whole of life, 

 yet with such intervals and relapses as occur in all the 

 chronic diseases of these general characters. It is the same 

 wrong treatment also which, leads to amaurosis or palsy : 

 and the author has given one striking case where, from per- 

 sistence in this system, mania, fatuity, and death were the 

 results. And when we consider how very common this 

 ophthalmia is, and that the chronic variety, which is even the 

 most common, has been overlooked by Wardrop, hitherto 

 the only guide for it, while, further, that the evacuant prac- 

 tice is followed by every one, mechanically, we shall have no 

 difficulty in seeing the utility to be derived from this new 

 description and correct theory. And as wrong practice is the 

 source of all the evil, so the right practice consists in what is 

 entirely opposed to it, or in the remedies for marsh fever and 

 neuralgia in general, under which it becomes a very manage- 

 able, and indeed almost a trivial disease. And if we said that 

 the author had conferred an important benefit on his race by 

 his new views of toothach, these are scarcely to be com- 



