SURGERY AND NATURE

Greymouth Evening Star, 22 March 1935, Page 5

SURGERY AND NATURE

BOTH EFFECT CURES

SYDNEY, March 9

In two i-acent cases in Sydney medical science and nature proved great healers of blindness and a dislocated neck, respectively. Both patients made rapid recoveries.

The operation which overcame the blindness is of purely Australian origin, first conceived and evolved over two years ago and practised so far only in Australia. Cures have been reported in New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland. The patient, Amy Bond, aged 14, of Dulwich Hill, a Sydney suburb, began to lose the use of her eyas. Her right eye could barely distinguish between daylight and darkness, and her left eye was getting worse daily. Specialists familiar with the rare disease performed a simple operation which, nevertheless, had only become known after months of minute investigation. A nerve in the neck, it was found, was playing a definite part in these particular cases of blindness. Through its impairment, the blood supply to the eyes was not normal, and atrophy of the retina followed. For tire operation to be successful, it was necessary for the eyes to have some life in them. Miss Bond found that her sight improved immediately after the operation, and within a fortnight sh was able to leave the hospital. Her vision was only slightly impaired, and doctors believed that before long it would become normal. Nature’s “patient” was Constable Rex Larnach-Jones, a 15 stone international forward who played with New South Wales against the All Blacks last year. At the police carnival he fell while vaulting, and dislocated his neck. One night in hospital Im moved his head while he was asleep, and the neck slipped back to its normal position. When doctors visited him next morning, they found they could do nothing more for him than to supply him with a surgical collar, which lr? will have to wear for a few weeks. He hopes to discard it by the time the football season starts.