291 
nerves of the orbit of the eye. 
tion in the living animal, and authorize the conclusion, that 
all the branches of the same division resemble each other in 
function, and bestow sensibility on the parts within, as well 
as on those without. 
That the ophthalmic nerve may be deprived of its func- 
tion, and the parts supplied by it of their sensibility, we may 
learn from the following instance, communicated to me by 
Mr. Crampton, of Dublin. To understand the inference 
from the following short narrative, it is only necessary to 
remember, that the nerve in question goes through the orbit, 
supplying the parts contained in it, but that it also extends 
its branches to the angle of the eye, eyelids, and forehead. 
“ A few days after the discharge from the ear had ceased, 
the eye became entirely insensible to the touch. This loss 
of feeling extended to the lining of the eyelids, to the skin 
covering them, and to the skin of the cheek and forehead, 
for about an inch surrounding the eye : it did not go beyond 
the middle line of the face. When she told me her eye was 
dead (as she expressed it), to be certain, I drew my finger 
over its surface ; and so far was this from giving her pain, 
that she assured me she could not feel that I was touching 
it at all. The eyelids made no effort to close while I was- 
doing this, but the conjunctiva appeared sensible to the sti- 
mulus, as a number of vessels on the surface of the eye 
became immediately injected with blood.’' 
Here we have an insensibility of the eye itself correspond- 
ing with the insensibility of the skin, which latter part we 
know possesses sensibility through the fifth nerve ; and we 
therefore conclude, that it is the affection of the same nerve 
near its root, to which we have to attribute the insensibility 
