A story published in LIFE in December 1948 offered vivid depictions of a procedure, pioneered by researchers in Boston, to fit a ball-shaped, pegged ocular implant in the eye socket.

They removed a rare spinal tumor by entering through a patient’s eye socket—a route never used before to reach the spine. Remarkably, the patient’s eyesight was not affected.

Two studies in the March issue of GIE: Gastrointestinal Endoscopy showed an increase in polyp detection rates using the Third Eye Retroscope during colonoscopy, according to a news release from the ...

A surgical team at the University of Maryland Medical Center extracted the tumors, which had wrapped around the spinal cord, through the patient’s eye socket.