77 



PERIODIC OPHTHALMIA. 



With some such feelings of dissatisfaction as must occupy the 

 mind of a geographer about to enter on the description of a coun- 

 try into the heart of which no traveller has been enabled to pene- 

 trate, may we be expected to set about the description of a disease 

 whose nature and cure yet remain to be developed. It would be 

 asserting too much to say, we do not understand more about it 

 than former practitioners in horse medicine did : science has shed 

 its lights upon and much improved our knowledge of diseases of 

 the eyes, as well as those of other organs ; but all art and practice 

 have failed in furnishing us with any thing in the shape of remedy, 

 by which we are able either to arrest this one in its destructive 

 course, or prevent its almost sure return and fatal termination ; 

 and therefore, in point of naked fact, what we profess to have learnt 

 concerning the nature of periodic ophthalmia has turned out of 

 very little practical use to us. Still, it is our duty to record what 

 we do know — to lay down such rules for the guidance of future 

 inquirers as form.er investigators and our own experience have put 

 us in possession of; and with such views as these, rather than with 

 any prospect of proving of much benefit to our suffering patients, 

 do we enter on the consideration of the subject before us. 



D'Arboval pronounces this disease, "de toutes les maladies, qui 

 affectent les yeux du cheval, la plus commune, la plus grave, la 

 plus opiniatre, la plus rebelle, la plus fatale." Had he said which 

 affect the horse, instead of the eyes of the horse, he would still not 

 have gone very wide of the truth. This indeed is — as has been 

 said of some other disease — " the bane of good horse-flesh." What 

 can be more annoying to the feelings of a horseman, than to be told 

 that what he took to be simply " a weak eye," or nothing more than 

 " a cold in the eye," is likely — nay, almost sure — to prove in the 

 end the cause of blindness ; and that, as it is not in the power of his 

 medical adviser to prevent this sad termination, he had better avail 

 himself of the first opportunity to dispose of his horse — to part 

 with him whom for so many good qualities he has set inestimable 



