A letter to the Right Honourable and Honourable the Directors of Greenwich Hospital, containing an exposure of the measures resorted to, by the medical officers of the London Eye Infirmary, for the purpose of retarding the adoption, and execution of plans for the extermination of the Egyptian ophthalmia from the Army, and from the Kingdom, submitted for the approval of Government, by Sir William Adams.

  • Adams, Sir William, 1783-1827.
Date:
1817
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to the Right Honourable and Honourable the Directors of Greenwich Hospital, containing an exposure of the measures resorted to, by the medical officers of the London Eye Infirmary, for the purpose of retarding the adoption, and execution of plans for the extermination of the Egyptian ophthalmia from the Army, and from the Kingdom, submitted for the approval of Government, by Sir William Adams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    the other framers of this report are equally cautious not to commit themselves, as the Secretary had done, by asserting, that I learned from Mr. Saunders the mode of removing opacities of the cornea, which are the real source of blindness, and not the granulations, as they wish to insinuate. Hence these pretensions advanced by the Medical Officers of Greenwich Hospital in their statement to the Directors, are not disproved, they being well aware, from their own practical experience, (for tl»ey themselves> took charge of the greater part of the biUid ophthalmia patients, after having witnesse-] my mode of treating that disease,) ihat the removal of the opaci- ties, after the granulations are wholly cured, coustitnle by far the most difficult, as well as the most essential part of the treatment; and it is evident that it is the J /e- dical Officers of the London Eye Infirmary, w ho viere incorrect in their statement respecting Mr. Saunders's supposed discovery of curing blindness, &c , in the chronic or granular stage of Egyptian ophthahi ia. These Medical Officers in the second conclusion, drawn from their Report, have thought proper to state, *' That Sir William Adams, then a gratuitous pupil of Mr. Saunders, learnedJrom krm the practice already mentioned, concerning the Egyptian ophthalmia, arid that he has only made the unimportant alteration, of removing the diseased growth by means of a different instrument*^ My obligations to Mr. Saunders were, it has been shewn, freely acknowledged hy myself; bi t Doctor practised it with success, was excision of the granrlar portions of the conjuDCii - a. For this operation, he preferred thesctssors to ;he kuife; aad he pievenle l the subsequent morbid growth of the conjunctiva, by frequently injecting on it iolution of alum or of the nitrate of silver.*'