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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    of my practice, if introduced into the medical practice of the army, they also io- i timate the two modes of treatment to be similar, although I explained to them, at the conference I had with them on this subject, the important ilifference both in their intention and efifect. The above quotations from Mr. Saunders's Paper, published in the Medical and Physical Journal in ; 1806, and from mine, which appeared in the same pe- riodical work in ]813, render it obvious, that his mode of practice in the treatment of acute inflamma- tions of the eye, and that which I have pursued for the cure of the Egyptian ophthalmia at its mry commence- ment, are entirely opposite. His object was to toer the I action of the heart and arteries, as a sedative^ if I may use the term, to the circulation; while mine, on the contrary^ was to increase in the highest degree their force and frequency, in order to excite a new action in the inflamed vessels, and thereby at once to destroy in- flammatory action, which can only be effected by the j most violent stimulus to the circulation*. i And here it may be asked, if, in 1813, I had pub- lished Mr. Saunders's practice as a discovery of my I own, why did not Doctor Farre, at that period^ come forward to claim it for Mr. Saunders, as he has since endeavoured to do? it being barely possible, that he should not have seen or known, of my pub- I lication, and the practice it promulgated ; a contro- * The practice of Mr. Saunders (the nauseating practice) is by no means peculiar; but keeping up violent vomiting; for eight or ten hours in the manner •which I have directed, (in order to imitate sea-sickness,) is a mode of cure which, as far as I can learn, no one but myself has ever practised. Indeed, from its severity, I consider it more peculiarly appUcable to public practice j and although, were I again to be attacked with Egyptian ophthalmia, I should employ it on myself, I have never ventured to adopt it on patients in private practice.