Notices respecting New Books. 221 
tions for the cure of cataract which have been practised upon the 
pensioners of the Royal Hospital, the great disparity in which ~ 
cannot fail to make a strong impression on the minds of the ho- 
nourable members of the Board. 
“ In order to bring them equally acquainted with the extent 
of the failures in extracting the cataract, as formerly practised, 
as well as with the great success of Mr. Adams’s improved modes 
of curing that disease, we have given a detailed description of 
the result of each, with the present state of the eyes which have 
been submitted to the trial of the two systems. 
«<The proportion of the eyes totally destroyed by the operation 
of extraction amounts to one-half the number operated upon ; 
to this the success of Mr. Adams, more particularly in the cases 
which had been considered incurable, as well as those previously 
operated upon without benefit, forms a very striking contrast, as 
it will be seen that his operations have failed but in one instance, 
“To enable the Board fully to appreciate this success, we 
think it proper to point out, that even in the men whose vision- 
is not at all, or but partially, benefited (with the exception of 
Ford), the operations were as perfectly executed as on those 
whose sight is completely restored. To the disease of the optic 
nerve, therefore, and not to the failure of the operation (as was 
the case where extraction had been formerly performed), is to 
be attributed the want of that perfectly successful issue which is 
so conspicuously displayed in the “¢ wneaxceptionable cases.’ 
** This diseased state of the optic nerve in those patients was 
originally apprehended by Mr. Adams; and when, at their ur- 
gent solicitations, he was prevailed upon to perform the necessary 
operations, he stipulated, that, should the event confirm his un- 
favourable opinions, we should attest the circumstances under 
which they were undertaken. 
“It is, however, very important to have ascertained, by actual 
experiment, as Mr. Adams has done on several of the pensioners, 
that the optic nerve, although so much diseased as to have de- 
terred a former practitioner from operating, yet, by the removal 
of the cataracts, and subjecting the eyes to a particular plan of 
discipline, their functions haye been sufficiently recovered to 
afford useful, and sometimes almost perfect, vision. An instance 
of the latter is shown in the case of Hartgill, blind for nearly 
twenty years, as supposed, by all the highest authorities in Lon- 
don, from gutta serena, for which disease he had been treated. 
Bray’s and Wilkins’s perfect restoration to sight are little less 
extraordinary, from the great age of the former, and the latter 
having had an artificial pupil formed after a complete obliteration 
of 
