120 CATARACT. 



at Lee, brought his horse one morning to the Horse Infirmary at Woolwich, 

 in consequence of its having fallen with him on his way to town, and cut its 

 knees and grazed one of its eyebrows. The injuries in the knees were hardly 

 skin-deep, and but of trifling consequence; but, on my attention being drawn 

 to the eye, I observed the cornea to be partially nebulous, and a cataract to 

 be plainly visible through the pupil, and the conjunctiva to be inflamed. 

 Neither of the opacities was hardly apparent enough to attract any one's no- 

 tice but that of a professional person ; and both were quite unconnected with 

 the slight bruise the orbital arch had sustained b}^ the fall not above an hour 

 or so before. Mr. C. expressed himself much surprised at the disclosure of 

 all this disease in his horse's eye, saying that, to his knowledge, the horse had 

 on no occasion manifested any signs of weak or inflamed eyes. I opened the 

 eye-vein, and it bled very freely ; and I gave the animal a dose of physic and 

 ordered a lead-wash, with a little tincture of opium in it, for the eye. I told 

 Mr. C. that I might, probably, succeed in removing the corneal opacity, but 

 that the cataract he might regard as beyond my reach. He returned with his 

 horse on the fifth day, saying that the physic had operated briskly, but was 

 now set, and that he himself thought the eye looked quite well again. I ex- 

 amined it, and could discover neither any relics of the corneal opacity nor of 

 cataract. 



In 1832, while my regiment was stationed at Windsor, Mr. R. shewed me 

 a favourite blood filly of his, three years old, very handsome, and of his own 

 breeding. I was " looking round her," as the phrase goes, when, by mere ac- 

 cident, I discovered that she in one of her eyes — I forget which — had got a 

 cataract ; but such a one, I thought, and I believe said at the time, as I did 

 not remember to have seen before. It was, to use Mr. Cartwright's compari- 

 son, in point of magnitude, "of the size of a coriander-seed," and exhibited to 

 the eye of the observer a well-defined insulated white speck, surrounded and 

 rendered still more perceptible by the clear blue of the pupil. It seemed to 

 me to present to the beholder much the same appearance that a speck upon the 

 cornea would produce, were it possible to view it through the pupil from the 

 back of the eye. I saw this filly again the following year, 1833, when the cata- 

 ract still existed, and in statu quo ; but I have not seen her since. 



In Conclusion, T shall relate a case of very recent occurrence, 

 which has operated in my mind with greater force to remove the 

 difficulties by which the resolution of these questions is beset, than 

 any thing that has yet come under my own observation. 



On the 10th of September, 1842, a lot of young horses were submitted to 

 be taken into the service as troopers. One among them, a three -year-old 

 black mare, fifteen hands high, betrayed an opacity in her near eye, with the 

 mark of a blow upon the orbital arch of the same side, and also a contusion — 

 apparently from a kick — on the near fore-leg. The opacity was in the pupil. 



