Fabricius’s description is altogether borrowed from the ancient authors. (Œ. C. ii, 16.) Guy of Cauliac, and the other surgical writers of that age, describe the operation in the same terms as the ancients. Guy mentions the operation of sucking out the cataract through a cannula, but does not approve of it. (vi, 2.) SECT. XXII.—ON ÆGILOPS, OR FISTULA LACHRYMALIS. The ægilops is an apostematous swelling between the great canthus and the nose; and it is an affection difficult to cure, owing to the thinness of the bodies, and the fear of injuring the eye by sympathy. If, therefore, the abscess burst at the surface, we remove the whole protruberance as far as the bone; and if the fistulous sore incline towards the cheek, we must lay it all open, and if the bone be sound, we must scrape it; but if diseased, we must burn it with cauteries, applying to the eye a sponge soaked in cold water. Some, after the excision of the flesh, use a perforator, and make a passage for the fluid or matter to the nose; but we are contented with burning alone, using the cauteries for ægilops, and burning down until a lamina of bone drop off; and after the burning we have recourse to lentils and honey, or to the application consisting of pomegranate-rind with honey, and other such desiccative remedies. If the ægilops incline to the canthus, and do not tend at all towards the surface, then, with a lancet for the operation on ptrygium, or one for bleeding, we may dissect out the body between the canthus as far as the abscess, and remove the deep-seated flesh, and have recourse to moderately desiccative applications. Glass reduced to a fine powder is wonderfully desiccative, and aloes with manna, in like manner. The rest of the treatment of fistula lachrymalis we have delivered in the Third Book. * * * * * COMMENTARY. Celsus remarks that the ægilops is sometimes of a carcinomatous nature, in which case he recommends us not to interfere with it. He refers here, no doubt, to lupus, which is of not uncommon occurrence near the inner angle of the eye. In recent cases which are not of this kind, he directs us to proceed in the following manner: the whole cavity of the abscess, as in fistulæ, is to be laid open down to the bone, which is to be burned with a red-hot iron, more especially if the bone be carious. Others, he says, instead of the cautery, use caustics, such as atramentum sutorium, chalcitis, or verdigris; but these things, he adds, are more slow in their operation, and less effectual. (vii, 7.) When the bone is diseased the celebrated Archigenes recommends it to be pierced with a slender perforator, or a hole is to be burnt in it with a red-hot iron. He mentions that others burned it by means of a funnel and melted lead. (Apud Galen. sec. loc. v; and Rhases Contin. ii, 4.)