Official papers relating to operations performed by order of the directors of the Royal Hospital for Seamen ... for the purpose of ascertaining the general efficacy of the new modes of treatment practised by Mr. Adams, for the cure of the various species of cataract, and the Egyptian ophthalmia.

  • Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich
Date:
1814
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Official papers relating to operations performed by order of the directors of the Royal Hospital for Seamen ... for the purpose of ascertaining the general efficacy of the new modes of treatment practised by Mr. Adams, for the cure of the various species of cataract, and the Egyptian ophthalmia. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    15/36 (page 7)
    ro.s(orc(l. To liic disease of tlie Optic Nerve, therefore, and not to llie failure of the operation, (ai> was tlie case where extraction iiad heen formerly ])erforined,) is to be attributed the want of that ])erfectly successful issue w hich is so conspicuo\isly displayed in the laiexcep- tionahle cases.'*'' I'll is diseased state of the Optic Nerve in those Pa- tients was originally a])preheiided by Mr. Adams; and when, at their urgent solicitations, lie was prevailed upon to jierform the necessary oj)erations, he stipulated, that, shoidd the event confirm his unfavourable opi- nions, we should attest the circumstances under wliich they were undertaken. it is, however, very important to liave ascertained, by actual experiment, as Mr. Adams lias done on several of the Pensioners, that the Optic Nerve, although so much diseased as to luive deterred a former Practitioner from operating, yet, by the removal of tlie Cataracts, and subjecting tlie Pyes to a particular plan of disci- j)line, their functions liave been sufliciently recovered to afl'ord useful, and sometimes almost ])erfect, vision. An instance of the latter is sliewii in the case of Ilartgill, blind for nearly twenty years, as supposed, by all the highest authorities in J/Ondon, from (iutta Serena, for which disease he had been treated. Jlray’s and Mdl- kins’s perf(‘ct restoration to sight are little less extraor- dinary, from the gr(‘at age of the former, and the latter having had an artificial Pu])il formed after a comph'te obliteration of that aperture, by an unsiiccessf'nl ojiera-