496 
ON CATARACT. 
Now I am on this subject, I may as well refer to and quote 
part of an admirable thesis presented to and sustained before the 
Academy of Medicine of Paris, by Theodore Mannoir, translated 
and inserted in Dr. Ryan’s valuable Medical and Surgical Jour- 
nal, No. 206, &c. of January 1836, and which thesis is w r ell 
worth the perusal of all veterinary surgeons. 
After having mentioned many interesting facts, he goes on to 
remark on blows , insolation, &c. &c. and says, ‘‘ It is known 
that some external accidents have, in certain cases with pre- 
disposed individuals, occasioned an exciting cause of cataract. 
When the effect follows very closely, the circumstance is regard- 
ed as the cause ,* and when the disease has, moreover, a much 
more rapid course than usually, there is every reason for believing 
that that is not a simple coincidence. 
“ Several examples of this kind are preserved in the thesis of 
Dr. Tartra. He relates from Terron, who had been eye-witness 
of the fact, that a lady who was struck on the eye by a bottle- 
cork, had that eye next day affected with cataract. A potter 
entered into his oven while it was still hot ; he came out of it 
with two ripe cataracts. Fabrice de Hilden has seen a lady, 
upwards of fifty years of age, become blind in one night by the 
formation of two cataracts, without pain or inflammation, and 
that after having wept for several days for the loss of one of her 
relations. A surgeon of Mayence relates the history of a man 
in whom a cataract was suddenly developed after a repast at 
which he had got intoxicated. It is known, finally, that one of 
the accusers of the celebrated Desault got into a violent passion 
on learning that he had been restored to liberty ; on the very 
instant, one of his eyes lost the faculty of seeing, and on the 
next day it was remarked that he was affected with a cataract. 
Dr. Carron Duvillards has seen in three sexagenarian individuals, 
a cataract developed very rapidly after a blow from a bottle-cork : 
at the end of a few days the opacity was already perceptible ; it 
became complete in the course of the year ; the sight remaining 
uninjured in the eye which had not been struck. He has seen 
the same accident occur in two women of from twenty-five to 
thirty years of age, who had received, one a blow from a racket 
club, the other a blow from a billiard queue. 
u I have not met with a single case in which such striking 
circumstances as those of which I have just spoken have pre- 
ceded the commencement of the cataract. Of fifty-seven patients 
questioned in this point of view, the following are the only ones 
that have presented any thing analogous/’ [Here follows the 
relation of six cases.] 
