The Ypsilanti daily press. (Ypsilanti, Mich.) 1928-1962, 1942-02-06

ollgi anu tACu OlA4g I'LL ONbA
his column.
Of sick headache which had been
with him all his life. l have the
autobiography Of a paranoiac.
have the account Of Danish pa
tient who had a brain tumor, called
"a Journey Around My Skull"
/ have a chapter written by
doctor which might be called THE
Mysterious Consequences Of Rent
ing an Old Farmhouse for the
Summer. The mysterious conse-
quences were that the doctor and
his wife and the cat and the dog
all developed a queer form of
paralysis which turned out to be
lead poisoning.
! have a doctors account Of his
own case of angina and DR.. Leon
ard Marks description of the de-
velopment of acromegaly in his
own person. Also DR.. Percival
Potts account Of his own Potts
fracture and DR.. ". 7. Gardeners
very cheerful resume. of his own
case OF heart disease. to say moth
ing of Mr.. Irwin Cobb's description
of hemorrhage from his gastric
ulcer which he published under
the title Of How 1t Feels to Die"
To these might be added an ar
ticle which have just found in an
old volume of Harpers monthly
magazine for September, 1878, by
the Reverend William H. Milburn
which is called my Blindness and
Albrecht Won Graefe."
Early Eye Operations
The Reverend Mr.. Milburn suf-
fered an unlucky. unintentional
blow from the hand of a playmate
in his left eye when he was five
years old. 1t gave him some trou-
be in college and kept getting
woxse afterwards in his work in
the ministry. He was friend Of
Prescott, the historian, who had
a similar experience and records
as an astonishing fact that no ocu-
list in all America could do him
any good.
He finally went to the great Won
Graefe in Berlin. and after two
years Of darkness, the doctor per-
formed an operation on him which
restored his sight. | gather from
the account that it was an iridec-
tony.
Before the operation the doctor
said to him, 81 have watched you
closely and see that you are a man
of nerve. There is slight spot in
the cornea which requires great
exactness. Chloroform can not
hold you as stesdy as your will.
What say you? l have confidence
in your self control"
The patient answered, "Go on
without the chloroform.
4. Advance in Eye Surgery
1t was before the introduction of
local anaesthesia for eye opera
tons. The astonishing and revela-
tory feature of this report to me
is that in the short period of less
than sixty years such operations
have become commonplace for the
modern ophthalmologist. There is
hardly a city Of fifty thousand
inhabitants in the United States
today but which has someone in
the city competent to perform this
operation successfully.
Won Graefe, of course, was one
of the two great pioneers of the
science of the diseases Of the eye,
the other being Donders, the Hol-
lander. He enthusiastically ac-
cepted and adopted the use Of the
ophthalmoscope which had been
invented by Helmholtz in 1856. At
present the department Of the dis
eases Of the eye is one Of the most
scientific in the entire field of
medical specialties.
1t seems astonishing that such
things as eye glasses to correct
retroactive errors, which we take
for granted almost as much as the
air we breathe, should have been
practically unknown at that time
or were in the hands Of charlatans.
Samuel Fepys closed his diary by
saying that he hoped that the Lord
would grant him patience in the
blindness which was about TO over
take him. AS an American oculist
has remarked, a pair Of diopter
lenses would have relieved him
and made him see as we'll as ever.