and Cure of Cataract. 427 



subject of much anxiety, and I never entertained the slightest 

 hope of a cure. My medical friends recommended the use of 

 what were then called Eye Pills, but having received no benefit 

 from them, and having learned from experience the sympathy 

 between the eye and the stomach, I used every day, and copi- 

 ously, the Pulvis salinus compositus, and at the end of about 

 eight months, when playing at chess in the same apartment, I 

 had the happiness of seeing the lamina? of the lens suddenly 

 brought into optical contact, and the entire disappearance of the 

 luminous and coloured apparition with which I had been so long 

 haunted. 



In speculating on the process by which the crystalline lens is 

 supplied with the necessary quantity of fluid, it occurred to me 

 that it might be derived from the aqueous humour, and that 

 cataract might be produced when there was too little water and 

 too much albumen in the fluid which filled the aqueous chamber. 



Upon this hypothesis, incipient cataract might be cured in 

 two ways : — 



1st. By discharging a portion of the aqueous humour, in the 

 hope that the fresh secretion, by which the loss is repaired, 

 may contain less albumen, and counteract the desiccation of 

 the lens. 



2nd. By injecting distilled water into the aqueous chamber, 

 to supply the quantity of humour discharged from it. 



The first of these methods I knew to be practicable and safe, 

 from the fact that a surgeon in the Manchester Infirmary, many 

 years ago, tapped the aqueous chamber of a female patient forty 

 times, in the vain hope of curing a case of conical cornea, which 

 he attributed to an excess of aqueous humour. The frequent 

 repetition of this operation shows how rapidly the humour is 

 secreted, and how reasonable it is to suppose that, in the case 

 of cataract, a healthier secretion might be produced under medi- 

 cal treatment. 



Although the second method, of injecting distilled water into 

 the aqueous chamber, presents greater difficulties, yet they do 

 not appear to be insuperable. In 1827, when I happened to be 

 in Dublin, I mentioned this method to the celebrated compara- 

 tive anatomist, Dr. Macartney, who considered it quite practi- 

 cable. He mentioned to me that a foreign oculist, whose name 

 I forget, had actually injected distilled water into the eye of a 

 patient with the view of supplying the aqueous humour that was 

 lost during the extraction of the lens. 



My attention was recalled to these suggestions for treating 

 incipient cataract, by the results of a series of experiments on 

 the changes which take place in the crystalline lenses of the 

 sheep, the cow, and the horse after death. In these experiments, 



2F2 



