layer, may also be concerned in the cases where the quantity of the aqueous humour.is either increased or diminished; and it must often participate in the inflammation which originates in the proper substance, r in the external covering of the cornea." We do not propose to follow Mr Wardrop any farther in his account of the other morbid changes of the cornea. The description of morbid structures little admits of abbreviation or analysis. We have made our readers acquainted with our author's plan, and have nearly said enough to give them some notion of the merit of the work itself. We add, however, the following extracts: Ossification of the Corne." A very curious case of a piece of bony matter which was formed in the substance of the cornea, or immediately behind it, was communicated to me by r Anderson, surgeon at Inverary: The patient was a woman of about 31 years of age. Upon carefully examining her right eye, I observed a substance of a whitish appearance in the under part of the globe of the eye, arising from the inside of the sclerotic coat, and extending upwards, below the cornea, over a great part of the iris, to very near the pupil. It had seemingly communicated much irritation to the eye, and induced a degree of inflammation, severe pain, almost a constant flow of tears, inability to bear the light, with a considerable diminution of sight. The ball of the eye performed its natural rotatory motion, but was less in size than the left eye. This complaint had been occasioned fifteen years ago, by a fall at the root of a tree by which one of the roots struck against her right eye, but did not cut any part of it. From this period, the said substance had begun to grow, and gradually increased in size; but the pain in the eye, and other symptoms were sufferable, until about nine months ago, when the complaint became more violent I advised her to submit to an operation, for the purpose of extracting the hard substance that appeared to injure her eye, to which she readily agreed. I made an incision into the cor-nea, in the manner recommended for the extraction of the cataract, then raised the flap of the cornea with a flat crooked probe, and with the same instrument, turned out a small piece of bone. The upper part of the bone was as thin as a piece of paper, at the under part it was thicker, porous, and brittle; of an irregular semilunar form, and about the size of half an ordinary silver sixpence. The upper part was quite detached, but the under part slightly adhered to some part of the globe out of sight; but it was easily extracted without requiring the use of the knife to separate its adhesions. From the unsteadiness of the patient, she would not permit me to examine from what part the ossification originated. I am consequently at a loss whether to suppose it took its growth from any of the coats of the eye, or if any osseous matter might, in consequence of the accident, collect within the said coats, and, in the course of fifteen years, form a complete bone." p. 73. Appearances Appearances of specks on dissection." When the cornea has been much more opaque, no other change is to be perceived after death, than a diminution of the transparency either of the external lamella, or of the whole substance of the cornea. I have had many opportunities, in the living body, of taking off layers of very opaque specks, and I have never been able to observe any other change, except that, in some of those which have been of long duration, the cornea had acquired a degree of hardness much greater than that of a sound cornea In most cases, too, a speck bleeds when a piece of it is removed in the living body; and I have observed this happen even when no red vessels passing into it could be detected by the naked eye. An incision in the healthy cornea gives little or no uneasiness, but when the portion of a speck is removed, it often excites acute pain." p. 92. Alterations in the form of the cornea." Leveillé, the French translator of Scarpa's work on the diseases of the eye, has described a case where the cornea of both eyes became of a conical form. Two examples of a similar disease have fallen under my own observation; but only one eye was affected in each of them. In both cases the conical figure of the cornea was very remarkable, and the apex of the cone was in the centre of the cornea. When the eye was viewed laterally, the apex resembled piece of solid crystal, and when looked at directly opposite, it had a transparent sparkling appearance, which prevented the pupil from being distinctly seen. "One of these cases occurred in a lady upwards of thirty years of age, and the changes produced in her vision were very remarkable. At one, or one and a half inch distance, she could distinguish small objects distinctly, when held towards the temporal angle of the eye, although it required considerable exertion; but the sphere of vision was very limited. On looking through a small hole in a card, she could distinguish objects held very close to the eye, and could even read a book. At any distance greater than two inches, vision was very indistinct, and, at a few feet, she could neither judge of the distance nor the form of an object. When she looked at a luminous body at a distance from her eye, such as a candle, it was multiplied five or six times, and all the images were more or less indistinct She could never find any glass sufficiently concave to assist her vision. She did not remark this complaint in her eye until she was about sixteen years of age, and she does not think that it has undergone any change since that time. "On mentioning to my ingenious friend Dr Brewster this case, which appeared to me so remarkable, he had the politeness to examine the eye, and to favour me with the following letter, giving a a most satisfactory and philosophical explanation of all the phenomena "When you first mentioned to me the case of Miss was much surprised at the number of images which she observed round luminous objects. As this multiplication of images could arise only from some irregularity in the cornea or crystalline lens, I which gave their surface the form of a polyhedron, it was completely inexplicable from the shape of the cornea itself, which your drawing represented as a regular surface, resembling very much that of a hyperboloid; for the only indistinctness occasioned by a cornea of this form, would arise from the concentration of the rays before they fell upon the retina. When I had the pleasure of examining the eye itself, the difficulty of explanation was in no respect diminished. In every aspect in which the cornea could be viewed, its section ap⚫peared to be a regular curve, increasing in curvature towards the vertex; a form which could produce no derangement in the refraction of the incident rays. As the disease was evidently seated in the cornea, which projected to an unnatural distance, it did not seem probable that there was any defect in the structure of the crystalline lens. I was therefore led to believe, that the broken and indistinct images which appeared to encircle luminous objects, arose from some eminences in the cornea, which could not be detected by a lateral view of the eye, but which might be rendered visible by the changes which they induced upon the image of a luminous object that was made to traverse the surface of the cornea. I therefore held a candle at the distance of fifteen inches from the cornea, and keeping my eye in the direction of the reflected rays, I observed the variations in the size and form of the image of the candle. The reflected image regularly decreased when it passed over the most convex parts of the cornea; but when it came to the part nearest the nose, it alternately expanded and contracted, and suffered such derangements, as to indicate the presence of a number of spherical eminences and depressions, which sufficiently accounted for the broken and multiplied images of luminous objects." p. 118. The fine plates which adorn and illustrate this Essay are seven in number; but as there are three drawings in each plate, we have accurate and beautiful delineations of twenty-one different morbid appearances, viz. of inflammation of the conjunctiva,— inflammation of the cornea and sclerotic coat,-pustular inflammation,-inflammation of the conjunctiva of the cornea,-ulcer of the cornea,-death of the cornea from lime,-membranous pterygium, common triangular pterygium,-fleshy pterygium,— tumour of the conjunctiva, with hair growing from it,-purulent matter in the anterior chamber, with opacity of the cornea,deep ulcer, with thickening of the cornea,-obscurity of the cornea, accompanied with entropeon,-circumscribed speck, with a blood-vessel passing into it,-pearl-coloured speck, with adhesion of the iris, and contracted pupil,-undefined speck, with adhesion of the iris,-complete staphyloma of the cornea,partial staphyloma,-conical formed cornea,-cornea distended from hydrophthalmia,-and a map of the blood-vessels of a staphyloma. A plan so well begun will, we hope, be prosecuted by our author. It is his intention, we are informed, if the public shall approve approve of this Essay, to consider the remaining diseases of the eye and its appendages, and the treatment which such diseases require. VI. Observations on the Effects of Evacuating the Aqueous Humour in Inflammation of the Eyes, and on the changes produced in the Transparency of the Cornea, from the increase or diminution of the con tents of the Eye-ball. By JAMES WARDROP, Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. Edinburgh, 1807. 8vo. 15 pages. Stitched. THIS is a republication of the ingenious paper inserted by Mr Wardrop in the 3d Vol. of this Journal, with the addition of another interesting case, so illustrative of the safety and advantage of the incision of the cornea in alleviating the violence of inflammation in ophthalmia, that we cannot refrain from laying it before our readers. "While a strong healthy workman was employed hammering melted iron, a piece of it fell into the eye, and was found lying between the eye-ball and under eye-lid. It occasioned most excruciating pain; and although it was removed in a few minutes, violent inflammation succeeded; and in four days after the accident he came to Edinburgh. The whole conjunctiva was then very much inflamed, and it was so much swelled, that the cornea appeared as if depressed. There was a white slough towards the inferior part of the sclerotic coat, and on the corresponding portion of the internal palpebral membrane; but the cornea was not injured, nor its transparency diminished. He complained of great pain in the ball of the eye, extending over the forehead, and through the whole side of the head. He could not raise the upper eye-lid without the assistance of his finger. Light gave considerable uneasiness, and his vision was so much destroyed, that he could only distinguish between light and darkness. In this situation I discharged the aqueous humour by making a small opening through the transparent cornea. The operation occasioned a smarting pain, which lasted a few seconds. When it went off, he said he could open the eye-lid much easier; and was surprised to find that he could distinguish the furniture of the room, and books in a library. Slight scarifications were afterwards made on the under eye-lid, which bled freely; and he was ad vised to use fomentations to the temples and adjacent parts; and as his pulse was frequent and full, he was bled at the arm, and ordered a brisk purge. During the day the pain of the eye-ball was much alleviated, and that of the head was completely removed, except an uneasy sensation still remaining in the brow. On the day following there was no vestige of the wound of the cornea; the pain and the swelling of the conjunctiva was nearly gone, but the redness continued. His vision was quite distinct, but the eye was irritable. In three days, by the application of an opiate, the inflammation was completely removed, his vision perfectly restored, and he returned home complaining merely of a little tenderness. Since which he has remained well." The utility of this practice has since been confirmed by the experience of Mr Ware. VII. Remarks on the Purulent Ophthalmy which has lately been epidemical in this Country. By JAMES WARE, Surgeon, F. R. S. London, 1808. 8vo. Pp. 57. IN N this little tract we are presented by Mr Ware with a few observations on that violent and destructive species of ophthal mia, which has lately prevailed so dreadfully in some of our regiments, and in different parts of the kingdom. Mr Ware does not think the appellation of Egyptian ophthalmia correct, because" an ophthalmy, precisely similar in its symptoms and progress, has appeared long ago in this and other countries, and has been described by various authors, ancient as well as modern." He therefore proposes the term purulent, as descriptive of one of its most striking and constant symptoms; but though such a disease has often been observed and described, we do not recollect any example of this very destructive ophthalmy being so widely diffused, and so evidently propagated by contagion as in the late instances. We must however recollect, that this epidemic appeared in this country after the return of our troops from Egypt; that our soldiers chiefly have since suffered from it; and that, on its appearance in particular regiments, it has been distinctly traced to the original source. Thus the infection was carried to the 52d regiment, by recruits from Ireland, who had formerly been affected with the disease, which they had con tracted |