PERIODIC OPHTH\LMIA. 81 



sufficient at least to enable us once more to see the parts within. 

 Through the anterior chamber, murky and darkened, we indis- 

 tinctly descry the iris, altered in colour and lustreless, with the 

 pupil contracted perhaps as much as ever, but now not evincing 

 that sensitive intolerance of light which it did in the inflammatory 

 stage ; and therefore it is that the horse, when left to himself, opens 

 his eye wider than he did before, particularly while standing in his 

 stall, with his head turned away from the glare of light. Within 

 the chamber, gravitating to the bottom of it, are to be perceived 

 flakes or flocculi of whitish or yellowish lymph, eff'usions, as we 

 suppose, from the vessels which secrete the aqueous humour. There 

 is no longer an overflow of tears upon the face, or nothing like to the 

 extent there was ; nor does the conjunctive membrane any longer ex- 

 hibit the same redness and tumidity it did at the beginning. In a 

 word, the inflammator}^ action is passing away, little more than its 

 consequences now remaining ; and from this time, daj^ by day, the 

 eye appears recovering from the attack. 



Remission. — I repeat, ajopears recovering, when, in too many- 

 instances, on the second, third, or fourth day afterwards, we find it 

 almost closed again, light being as annoying to it as ever, fresh 

 tears running over the face, and obscuration once more clouding 

 the cornea : in a word, there is an evident remission of the symp- 

 toms, leading us to believe the treatment adopted — whatever it 

 may have been — has been productive rather of harm than good. 

 Two or three or four days more elapsing, and the inflammatory 

 symptonas are evidently once more on the decline ; the eye appears 

 in the convalescent condition it was before the remission, and hence- 

 forth all inflammation and irritability will quickly subside : the ab- 

 sorption of the matters effused into the substance of the cornea, 

 and into the chamber, and the consequent return of transparency to 

 these parts, following as natural consequences. The brightening of 

 the chamber may be observed to take place from above downward : 

 but as for the clearing of the cornea, that proceeds so impercep- 

 tibly that it is difficult to say whether the process begins and ends 

 in any particular locality. 



Some Febrile Disorder, during the accession and continu- 

 ance of the inflammatory paroxysm, is discoverable in the system : 



VOL. III. M 



