Enucleation

Also: eye removal

Surgical removal of the whole eyeball. In Halifax in 1917, surgeons removed 249 eyes in the weeks after the explosion.

Questions this entry answers

  • What is enucleation of the eye?
  • Why were so many eyes removed after the Halifax Explosion?
  • How many people were blinded in the Halifax Explosion?

Definition

Enucleation is the surgical removal of the entire eyeball, leaving the eyelids and the muscles of the eye socket in place. An artificial eye can later be fitted into the socket.

Historical context

Before antibiotics and modern microsurgery, a badly damaged eye could rarely be saved. It could also become infected, and surgeons feared it could trigger an inflammation that would destroy the other, healthy eye. Removing it was often the treatment that offered the best chance of keeping some sight.

How it worked

In Halifax in December 1917, most enucleations were performed under chloroform. Dr. George Cox, an eye, ear, nose and throat specialist from New Glasgow, performed dozens over four days at Camp Hill Hospital, removing glass and other debris from eye sockets as well. A dozen eye surgeons worked across the city in the weeks that followed.

What it meant for the patient, the soldier, the civilian

The people on the tables had been standing at their windows, watching a ship burn. Many were children. They woke with one eye or none, in a city where the windows were gone and a snowstorm was coming in.

By June 1918, 145 glass artificial eyes made in Boston had been supplied. Forty people were totally blind, eight of them children, who were boarded at the Halifax School for the Blind. In 1954, twenty-one survivors were still drawing pensions for blindness caused by the explosion.

Examples from history

  • Halifax, 1917. 592 people had eye injuries. 249 eyes were removed, and 16 people lost both. That is roughly 42% of injured eyes. One surgeon who arrived later, Capt. Frederick Tooke, asked in print whether too many had been removed.

Sources

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Primary source

  1. Tooke, F. T. "An experience through the Halifax disaster." Canadian Medical Association Journal 1918;8(4):308–320. View source

    Not yet checked against the source

Scholarly secondary source

  1. McAlister, C. N., Murray, T. J., Lakosha, H., Maxner, C. E. "The Halifax disaster (1917): eye injuries and their care." British Journal of Ophthalmology 2007;91:832–5. View source

    Not yet checked against the source

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