87

METEOROLOGICAL TABLE.

From the 25th of November, to the 25th of December.

Quantity of rain from November the 25th to December the 25th, 180. It will, probably, be considered that this interval has been remarkably dry, and on recurring to our register of last year, for the same period, we find that one inch of rain fell. This interval has also been charac terised by an unusual continuance of frost, which lasted from the 6th to the 17th of December, the thermometer sometimes being as low as 240 in exposed situations.

The case of small-pox after vaccination mentioned in our last, and which is referred to by a correspondent as likely to be injurious, froin being too indefinitely related, occured to a young lady at Hackney, and under the care, as we are informed, of Mr. Leese, who also vaccinated her. We hope the case will be fully explained by that gentleman; and then we have no doubt but it will be fully seen that it was unexpectedly mild, the susceptibility to the action of variola having been lowered by the previous vaccination.-Several cases of croup have occurred, and the various forms of pulmonic affections are becoming frequent.

MONTHLY

MONTHLY CATALOGUE OF MEDICAL BOOKS.

YALLOW'S Catalogue (Part II. for 1813) of elegant Books, with

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Plates; Liber Medici, Anatomica, Chirurgici, et Chemici; with an extensive assortment of French, Italian, and German, Works, many of which are recently imported; including a selection of Second-hand English Books, many of them of great rarity.

A Treatise on Worms and other Animals which infest the Human Body, with the most speedy, safe, and pleasant, means of cure. By T. Bradley, M.D. 12mo. plates.-Underwood.

Cursory Remarks on Corpulency. By a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons. The second Edition, with additions, and illustrated by an Engraving.-Callow.

NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS.

Mr. Adams's paper, asserting his claim to the discovery of certain curalive processes in Diseases of the Eye, will appear in our next Number; it arrived too late for insertion in the present. Mr. Blair's notes on Syphilis, announced last month, have not yet been received, but we have reason to expect the first paper will appear in the ensuing Number of our Journal. Communications have reached us from Dr. Christie, Mr. Davies, Mr. Leath, Medicus, Senex, Juvenis, &c. &c. We are obliged to Mr. Rigby for a copy of his work, to which we shall pay early attention.

CORRIGENDUM.

In the notice of Mr. Stevenson's Lectures in our last Number, for eight o'clock in the evening," read eight o'clock in the morning.

THE

Medical and Physical Journal.

2 OF VOL. XXIX.]

FEBRUARY, 1813.

[NO. 168.

For the Medical and Physical Journal.

MR. ADAMS on the ORIGIN of one of his INSTRUMENTS and OPERATIONS for the CURE of CATARACT.

I

HAVE always considered it to be the duty of a professional man, who, from the opportunities afforded by an extensive public and private practice, has been enabled to make improvements in medicine or surgery, to communicate the result of his experience to his professional brethren, for the general benefit of mankind. So few, comparatively, enjoy those opportunities, that it becomes the more incumbent on them to make no concealment of any useful knowledge acquired by such advantages. Those, therefore, who have deviated from this honorable line of conduct, have usually been assailed with well-merited reproaches. Every prudent man will, however, be careful, for the sake of his own reputation, to avoid the disclosure of a new practice, until, by repeated and varied trials, he has ascertained its comparative merits with that which is generally adopted; and he is justly entitled to be tenacious of a premature communication of his opinions, least the credit of his own invention should be seized upon by another, or its value, by a partial anticipation, be depreciated in the public estimation before it is thoroughly understood. Circumstances may sometimes give to this sanctionable caution an appearance of unnecessary concealment, and expose the most deserving individual to severe and unmerited censure. I allude more particularly to my late friend and preceptor

Mr. Saunders.

In my practical observations on Ectropium, artificial pupil, and cataract, I have had occasion to notice the ac cusations of illiberal concealment, which since his death have been brought against him, and have there expressed my gratitude for his disinterested and liberal conduct to me, which conduct I' brought forward as a direct refutation to those accusations, and now feel happy in the opportunity of repeating. His first attentions to me originated in consequence of our having served an apprenticeship to the same general practitioner, the late Mr. Hill, of Barnstaple, whose successful practice on diseases of the eye gave to us both a predilection for that branch of our profession. I had no claims on the friendship of Mr. Saunders, yet he not only No. 168. gratuitously

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gratuitously instructed me in the general principles of his practice, and allowed me for nearly eighteen months to assist him in the whole of his operations both on his public and private patients, but so entirely free was his mind from the least tincture of professional illiberality, that he afterwards assisted me by the most friendly services in the establishment of an institution precisely similar to his own, allowed his name to be placed as consulting oculist, and gave the public confidence, in this infant establishment, by officially announcing, in the fourth annual Report of the London Eye Infirmary, the instructions which he had afforded me, although this institution was in a situation commanding the practice of the whole of the west of England; and he knew, that, in obedience to the injunctions of some of its first and best patrons, I had been reluctantly compelled to relinquish the general practice of surgery and medicine, for the same particular branches which he had himself chosen. This was the man who has been accused of illiberal concealment !

*

Having been his constant, indeed his sole, assistant, (the two gentlemen who, after I left his tuition, attended the practice of the infirmary for three months each, not having been admitted to witness his operations for cataract,) I can bear testimony to the successive alterations in his practice; while, as justly observed by the respectable editor of his posthumous work, in a letter inserted in the last Number of this Journal, with a head to devise, and a hand to execute, he was deliberately following up all the possible means of

"This process for curing the cataract in children, together with other observations relative to the eye, which I am about to publish as soon as the necessary arrangements can be made, has already been freely communicated to an individual, and the ample scene of experience which this Infirmary affords opened to his view, from a disinterested wish to promote his professional object. Mr. Adams has since settled in Exeter, and there established a charity on the model of this institution. This event I could not refrain from noticing, because it must excite in your minds, and the minds of the governors, the grateful reflection that your benevolence has given life and activity to an institution which has benefited society not only in its own operation, but by giving direct origin to an establishment producing its contingent of good in another part of the kingdom. That which was so liberally given in the spirit of private friendship, has been so long withheld from the public, in the hope of making it more worthy of acceptance, and not through a mercenary motive, as some have malignantly observed, or an inclination to boast the possession of a secret." Vide Mr. Saunders's official Letter, inserted in the 4th Annual Report of the London Eye Infirmary, published in March 1809.

operating

operating for the cataract, to decide, by a just comparison, their relative advantages. This was the original cause of the delay so much complained of in the publication of his practice; and the fatal disorder that so long preyed on his constitution, at length terminated his existence before he could fulfil the promise he had given. No person felt more' regret at the delay in the appearance of Mr. Saunders's posthumous work than myself, as I was thereby deterred from publishing some important improvements which I had made in his instrument, and the operation for cataract, under the impression, that they would, in some degree, have anticipated his work, which I should have considered a breach of good faith and gratitude which could not be sanctioned by any personal advantages, particularly as the proceeds of its sale had been generously and exclusively appropriated to the benefit of his widow, by the committee of the London Infirmary for curing Diseases of the Eye.

From the period I found it necessary to abandon the posterior operation taught me by Mr. Saunders, it has been my invariable custom, wherever called upon to operate on diseases of the eye, to invite my professional acquaintance to witness my modes of practice, that they might be enabled to judge of their comparative merit with those in general use. Had I, however, possessed the prudent caution of my deceased friend, I should not have been anticipated in communicating to the public the revival of Cheselden's obsolete operation for artificial pupil, or have seen an imperfect description given of one of my operations for the cure of cataract, circumstances which obliged me to publish my prac tical observations much sooner than I should otherwise have done after the appearance of Mr. Saunders's book; neither should I now feel it necessary, but from some other effects of that incaution, to repeat the description already given in my work, of my instrument and operation for the cure of the solid cataract in children and adults, which for nearly four years past I have made use of and practised; or have thought it requisite now to give the history of their origin.

In the second section of my Practical Observations on Cataract, is given the following description of my two-edged needle, and mode of conducting an operation for the cure of the solid cataract in children and adults:

"The blade of the needle which I.now employ is eight tenths of an inch long, the third part of a line in width, nearly flat, having a slight degree of convexity throughout its whole extent. It is spear-pointed, with the edges made as sharp as possible to the extent of four-tenths of an inch.. Beyond the cutting edges it gradually thickens, so as to