THE ORBIT OF THE EVE. 
509 
continued pain, and suffer considerable loss of condition, yet he 
might hereafter be useful to us, although blind in that eye : but if 
the unfortunate animal should be a sheep or an ox, and in fair 
condition, humanity would, in almost every possible case, demand 
his immediate destruction. 
When there is evident and deep puncture of the eye, the tepid 
lotion or the poultice should be abundant in quantity, and extend 
over the whole of the head of the animal. General and violent 
fever will oftentimes be the consequence of an injury like this. 
After aAvhile, however, if the case goes on prosperously, the lids 
which were protruded and swelled will gradually become a little 
relaxed, and, by degrees, a portion of the bulb of the eye, hitherto 
hidden, will be seen. Let no attempt be made violently to force 
them open, but await with patience the subsidence of the inflam- 
mation and the swelling. The cornea will be found obscure, the 
wound not yet closed. Now will be the time for the gradual dis- 
use of the emollient applications, and the cautious trial of astrin- 
gent ones. This, however, will be the subject of consideration in 
a future lecture. 
In a majority of cases, even although the point of the fork 
may have penetrated the eyelid, and may have grazed the lucid 
cornea, or the sclerotica, it will glance off from the bulb of the 
eye, and continue its course to the back of the orbit. The form, 
and appendages, and mobility of the eye, and the mass of fat by 
which it is surrounded, will readily account for this. The direction 
of the weapon is changed by the turning of the eye, and it passes 
on to the outer angle, or the superior part, where there is no dan- 
gerous spot, or to the inner angle of the orbit, where danger must 
attend its progress, supposing that it reaches the bone. The yield- 
ing resistance, however, which it has experienced in its way — 
that resistance which is the most certain and effectual — will gene- 
rally have arrested its progress ere it can penetrate to the recesses 
of the orbit. It must be left to time to develope whether the bone 
has been reached, and in what direction, and with what effect : and 
here again I would urge you never to have recourse to the probe. 
You can never draw from it any legitimate conclusion, but you 
will increase the inflammation and the pain. 
M. Leblanc relates two cases of wounds in the eye of the ox 
with a fork. In the first he found his patient, three days after the 
accident, in a most alarming situation. The eye was closed, and 
dreadfully swelled ; the pulse was hard and quick, and the fever 
of reaction extreme. He adopted the most decisive treatment, — he 
bled and physicked, and fomented. On the eighth day the eye 
was nearly protruded from the orbit. He plunged his lancet into 
it, and a great quantity of mingled purulent and bloody matter 
VOL. XII. 3 x 
