who recovered his Sight when seven Tears of Age. 393 
tions on the use of the couching needle, in those cases where 
the cataract is soft, or fluid. Mr. Pott considered this as a very 
common state of the disorder ; and does not make any distinc- 
tion between the cataract when it attacks grown persons, and 
when children are born with it. In the former case, experience 
inclines me to believe, that the cataract is very rarely fluid, 
or even soft; whereas, in the latter, I have always found it, 
agreeable to the observation of the Baron de Wenzel, in one 
or other of these states. Although, therefore, in the case of 
grown persons, the operation of extraction appears to me to have 
very great advantages over that of depression, yet, in the case 
of children, I can readily accede to almost the whole that Mr. 
Pott advances in favour of depression. If the couching needle 
be passed in the way in which it is usually introduced to de- 
press the cataract, and thereby a large aperture be made in the 
capsule of the crystalline, (which operation may be performed 
with perfect safety, and with very little pain to the patient, 
whilst the eye is fixed with a speculum oculi,) the opaque crys- 
talline, being thus brought into contact with the aqueous and 
vitreous humours, will, in a shorter or longer space of time, 
according to its degree of softness, be absorbed ; and, if there 
be not an opacity in the capsule, as well as in the crystalline, 
the pupil will become clear, and the patient will acquire a very 
useful sight. If, in addition to the opacity of the crystalline, the 
capsule be also opaque, and, in consequence of this, the opera- 
tion do not prove successful, the eye will nevertheless .be per- 
fectly uninjured, and it will be as fit, at a subsequent period, to 
have the capsule extracted, as it would have been if no attempt 
of the above kind had been previously made. 
3 E 
MDCCCI. 
