Is it possible to take a human eye out of its socket?
What an odd question… An eye is stuck in the socket by nine things: two eyelids, six muscles, and the optic nerve. It’s easy to pull the eyelids out of the way, so that leaves seven things left. The muscles can be removed while retaining vision, but if the optic nerve is cut, the vision is gone permanently. So, you could technically cut all the muscles, pull the eyeball out to the length of the optic nerve (it was a couple centimeters (less than an inch) of slack in the socket), then suture the muscles back, but this cutting and reattachment of the muscles is not very precise and could easily lead to double vision or other eye coordination difficulties. So no, it can’t reach the cheek while retaining vision, but it could be pulled out a tiny bit if you wanted to be particularly cruel. When they remove eyes because of tumours or other diseases, this is basically the procedure: cut the muscles, cut the nerve, and put in the prosthetic implant.
