457 
INSIDE THE EYE: THE OPHTHALMOSCOPE AND 
ITS USES. 
BY EKNEST HART, 
OPHTHALMIC SURGEOH, AND LECTURER ON OPHTHALMIC SURGERY AND 
MEDICINE AT ST. MART’S HOSPITAL MEDICAL SCHOOL. 
- ' — I 
T here are few spectacles more affecting — and there were 
few more hopelessly distressing — than that which many 
have seen, of the blind man^ with eyes mialtered in their human 
aspect of beauty searching vainly to penetrate the unchange- 
able darkness of a noon day_, bright to others^ and replete with 
the splendour of light and colour.. There have always been 
many of these sufferers from a disease which claims the most 
profound sympathy, and which seemed bitterly to reproach om* 
science that it could not timely penetrate the mystery of that 
obscure chamber which lies behind the iris, and had found 
no means for enabling us to see through the clear but dark- 
ened space of the pupil. That reproach, at least, exists in 
part no longer. Since some few years now we have learnt how 
to explain the obscurity of the interior of the eye, and by 
what optical contrivances we can overcome this darkness and 
look into the depths of the ocular globe ; thus inspecting with 
ease, and quite painlessly to the individual, the lenses and 
humours of the eye, the nerve of sight and its transparent 
retinal expansion, and even the vascular tissue which lies 
behind and surrounds this. This is a great triumph of 
physical science, and it is no barren triumph. The' insight 
which we gain into the host of affections of the refracting 
media and deep membranes of the eye has given to our dia- 
gnosis and therapeutical treatment of the most obscure forms of 
disease leading to blindness, a certainty and precision to which 
we were formerly strangers. 
The optical instrument by which we are able to effect this 
inspection is known by the fitting title of the Ophthalmoscope 
{ocj)0aXpogj the eye ; o-jcottew, I survey). With this instrument. 
