An address delivered before the Suffolk District Medical Society, Boston, April 30, 1853.

  • Williams, Henry W. (Henry Willard), 1821-1895.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An address delivered before the Suffolk District Medical Society, Boston, April 30, 1853. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    The tissues, at the affections of which we have glanced, are all subsidiary to the uses of the eye as an organ of special sensation. We have seen that the retina is susceptible of organic alterations, the consequences of inflammation, in common with the other component parts of the globe; but the most important portion of the pathology of the nervous apparatus consists in those functional derangements by which its office in receiving and transmitting im- pressions of external objects is perverted or abolished. These morbid conditions have a peculiar interest, from the fact that judicious advice, given when the first warning intimations are perceived, may often remove the causes whose continued influence would be sure to produce them; — and also because, if al- ready established, they are susceptible to the influ- ence of remedies in proportion to the shortness of the interval which has elapsed since they first mani- fested themselves. It is sad to see an infant of a few days old, whose eyes had scarcely been opened upon the world be- fore its beauties were forever shut out from the only sense which can appreciate beauty; — but we look with yet more of pity upon the gradual extinction of vision in the poor girl, who loses, not only the