Stitched Iris

When Clare Brett, 4, fell from her horse and ran a stick into her right eye, she was lucky that the accident occurred at .home in Fairfield, Conn. Near the Bretts (Grandfather George Platt Brett is board chairman of Macmillan Co., publishers) lives Dr. Edward Nicholas DeWitt, able ophthalmologist, 1917 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School where he studied under famed Dr. George Edmund de Schweinitz. Dr. DeWitt knew a way to stitch up Baby Brett's torn eye.

The iris is a delicate, loosely meshed mat of tiny blood vessels, nerves, muscles and flimsy connective tissue. A circular system of muscles around the pupil opening acts as a draw string to decrease the size of the pupil in bright light. Radiating from the outer circumference of the iris to the pupil are muscles which draw the pupil open in dull light, like the pull cords of a curtain.*

Taught & stimulated by Professor de Schweinitz at the University of Pennsylvania, Professor William Holland Wilmer at Johns Hopkins, Professor John Martin Wheeler of Columbia, and their compeers. U. S. eye surgeons have developed a marvelously precise technique. Their scalpels are slim. Their scissors resemble manicuring scissors. Needles are feather light, thread gossamer thin.

Because the iris is so fragile a fabric of vessels, nerves and muscles, it is difficult to hold the sutures with which an eye surgeon might attempt to mend a tear. Ordinarily the surgeon contents himself with cutting off the loosened bits of iris and guarding the eye against infection. This leaves the pupil a jagged hole, which is more fascinating than ugly.

Dr. DeWitt essayed the unusual operation to give four-year-old Clare Brett a perfect pupil. With equipment which he declared did not exist until three years ago, and which he would not describe, Dr. DeWitt mended the child's iris.

Last week, a fortnight after the accident and surgery, Clare Brett's right eye looked as though it would recover perfectly. Dr. DeWitt was preparing a report for the medical journals.

* The pupil also grows smaller when the eye scans something at short range, expands when the eye looks at distant objects.

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