PROCEEDINGS 



OF 



THE ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY. 



1837. No. 6. 



June 12. 



Rev. B. LLOYD, D.D., Provost, T. C. D., President, 

 in the Chair. 



A paper was read, entitled, " An Inquiry into the Pos- 

 sibility of transplanting the Cornea, with the view of reliev- 

 ing Blindness occasioned by Diseases of that Structure." 

 By Samuel Lenox Bigger, Esq. 



The author stated that his expectation of succeeding in 

 this operation had been first raised by the partial success 

 attending an attempt which he had made, while a prisoner 

 with a nomadic tribe of Arabs, — the subject of the operation 

 being a gazelle. Having been thus led to inquire what had 

 been done elsewhere to relieve or cure the opaque state of 

 the cornea, Mr. Bigger found that the idea of performing the 

 operation of transplantation had been entertained in Ger- 

 many alone ; that experiments had been made in that 

 country, by Moesner, Reisinger, Schon, Drolshagen, Dief- 

 fenbach, and Thome, with various results ; but that Wutzer 

 was the only person whose belief in the possibility of the 

 operation led him to attempt it on the human subject, — an 

 attempt in which he was unsuccessful, owing to the resist- 

 ance of his patient. 



The author then described the plan of operation which 



