A case of electric light burn of the eyes with transient blindness / by Burton Chance.

  • Chance, Burton Kollock, 1868-1965.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A case of electric light burn of the eyes with transient blindness / by Burton Chance. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    sis of electric-lamp lights, and he had been studying a lamp consisting of flaming arc- carbons, composed of a mixture of chemical salts and carbon, which were of six-hundred candle-power for a three ampere lamp, though he had used one of two-thousand candle- power. The arc itself gave the light, that is, the light was produced by the efflorescence of gas generated by the approximation of the two carbons rather than in the ordinary way by their conjunction. He had used no screens nor shades except the large glass globe over the lamp. His usual work con- sists in the study of the best composition and the manufacture of these special carbons and in trying to obtain the greatest light for the least electric power employed. He usually worked ten feet distant from the lamp, but, on the day in question, he had been working from a few minutes to an hour or more at a time, at only two or three feet away. The flrst signs noted by the subject of this paper were fleeting blind-spots about his work bench, and a dimness of all other lights, together with distinct redness of flames which he knows to have contained red elements, though white and other col- ored lights were not so affected. True images were not distorted; neither were after-images unusually destroyed. Then he had a sensation as though his eyes and lids had been sunburned, and on opening and closing his lids the membranes seemed parched. Six hours after leaving the labora- tory the violent symptoms set in. In the three weeks succeeding he com- plained neither of blind spots nor of distor- tions. Yellow gas flames appeared red for a short time after lighting; and he continued to be sensitive to arc-lights in the laboratory In spite of his careful use of eyeglasses, and shades over the lamps.