C AT A K ACT. 115 



Examining the eye very attentively the next day, I thought 1 cuidd perceive 

 a slight motion in the speck, and that it did not exactly keep the same situation. 

 I now began to waver in my opinion whether it was a cataract, and resolved 

 to keep the horse until I saw the result. In a few days the inflammation 

 subsided, and in about a fortnight the opacity was gone.''' " I consider the 

 opaque spot in this case to have been a small portion of condensed coagidahle 

 lymph in the posterior chamber of the eye, the product of accidental inflam- 

 mation. I am quite convinced that, had this horse been brought to me for 

 casual examination, I should have pronounced him to have had a cataract ; 

 and had I not seen him again for some considerable time, and then found 

 that the opacity was gone, I, no doubt, should have asserted that the cata- 

 ract had been absorbed." 



Mr. Clay, V.S., Shrewsbury, whose evidence on the trial, 

 which has incidentally been productive of so much valuable dis- 

 cussion on the subject before us, was both of a novel and most 

 important character, kindly afterwards — in The VETERINARIAN 

 for the same year, 1834 — at my request, favoured the profession 

 with *' some of the cases on which his opinion of the formation of 

 cataract in the eye of the horse was founded." Those opinions 

 being — 1st, " That he had known cataract form without active 

 inflammation, or without any previous apparent disease in the eye." 

 2dly, '' That he had detected small cataracts when the owners (of 

 the horses) had not the slightest suspicion of any disease in the 

 eye, and had denied that any previous inflammation had ever been 

 observed." 3dly, 1 may be at liberty to add, though Mr. Clay 

 has not — as shewn by two out of the three cases reported — that he 

 has known cataracts to be absorbed ; and 4thly, also, That it is 

 surprising how little some cataracts appear to disturb or diminish 

 vision. 



Case I. — " A filly foal, the property of the Rev. Dr. Gardner, of San saw, 

 had cataract in both eyes without inflammation. This filly having run a nail 

 into one of her fore feet, when about a fortnight old, I was requested to see 

 her. While waiting in the box for an assistant, I amused myself by looking 

 at her eyes. There ivas not then the least appearance of cataract, or any 

 other disease of the eye ; hut in nine or ten days after this I observed a cata- 

 ract in the near eye, about the size of a small pin's head. My attention was 

 then drawn to the off eye, but, after a most miimte examination, / could not 

 detect the slightest appearance of cataract in il ; yet about four or Jive days 

 after this, when I again visited Sansaw, and upon a second examination of 



