616 
ON CATARACT. 
same with cataraet and ophthalmia as many are with pneumonia 
and pleuritis—he is for lumping them together ; but I maintain 
that each of these diseases may appear separately. 
Three cases of what I call 'pure cataract have fallen under 
my own observation: I will give you a detail of one of them. 
Some time ago, a brown mare, aged, belonging to a lady of this 
place, was offered on sale. I looked her over, and considered 
her a stout useful animal; but upon inspecting the eyes in the 
shade, I discovered a cataract in the near eye. I said to the 
servant, who was standing by, “ Your mare has got a cataract 
in the near eye, and she is blind from it.'^ He seemed quite 
astounded; and I had great diflSculty in convincing him that 
such was the case. He said he had looked after her for years, 
and was quite sure that her eyes had never been bad; and they 
were considered by most persons to be beautiful eyes. Her 
former owners declared to the same effect; and, in fact, she was 
never known to be ill a day. 
After inspecting the eyes, I felt not the least surprise at this 
ignorance of her real state on the part of her owners; for a pro¬ 
fessional man, carelessly glancing at the eye, might have over¬ 
looked it. However, she was sold as being blind in one eye 
from cataract. 
This was a case in which, without the testimony of her owners, 
I should at once have set down as one of pure cataract; I mean, 
cataract not produced in the usual way, by attacks of inflamma¬ 
tion of ophthalmia; for the eye, in every other particular ex¬ 
cepting the opacity of the lens, was as beautiful a browm eye as 
I ever saw ; it agreed in size with its fellow, which w'as sound; 
the cornea, aqueous humour, iris, and glandular bodies, were 
perfectly clear and distinct. Now, if this cataract had been the 
result of the inflammation of ophthalmia, I should have expected 
to have seen some of those accompaniments—some of those 
altered appearances of the interior of the eye generally, however 
faint—which Mr. Molyneux so justly makes mention of; and 
most assuredly I should have seen them; for when an eye has 
been the subject of attacks of the inflammation of ophthalmia, 
however mild, and especially when attacks more severe had 
terminated in cataract and blindness, that eye would not—it 
could not—look like a healthy one that had never suffered from 
disease. 
