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1809, when he was appointed to the lucrative post of Surgeon to the 

 East India Company's Volunteer Corps. This piece of good fortune 

 at once determined the aspect of his future life. He was a man of 

 great natural endowment, to which was added the charm of manners, 

 to say nothing of an exquisite tact and great tenderness in dealing 

 with the misfortunes of others. It is well known that for these 

 reasons Mr. Travers was always held in the highest esteem, both by 

 the profession and the public. 



In 1810, on the death of Mr. Saunders, Mr. Travers joined Dr. 

 Farre at the Eye Infirmary in Charterhouse Square. This appoint- 

 ment speedily brought with it a great accession of private business. 

 To this connection the profession is indebted for one of Mr. Travers's 

 earliest and most popular works, " The Synopsis of Diseases of the 

 Eye." This book speedily ran through three editions, besides being 

 republished in America, and translated into Italian by Dr. Apolloni, 

 a physician of Pisa. It possesses the great merit of being founded 

 on original observation, and was long held in much regard as a 

 Text-Book, though since superseded by larger and more ambitious 

 publications. 



No Hospital Surgeon ever attained a wider or more justly-deserved 

 reputation for a profound knowledge of eye-disease than the subject 

 of this notice. His papers on Cataract in the Medico-Chirugical 

 Transactions, and the treatise above mentioned, were received at the 

 time as masterpieces of accurate symptomatology ; they abound in 

 new facts, and form an elegant and comprehensive digest of all that 

 was then known touching various important points of practice. 



At the time of Mr. Travers's appointment to the office of Surgeon 

 to St. Thomas's Hospital in 1815, the post was one of extreme inde- 

 pendence, and the field of observation has at all times been very ex- 

 tensive. 



So long as his health lasted, Mr. Travers availed himself of this 

 splendid opportunity to its fullest extent, and we soon find him asso- 

 ciated in the surgical course with his great colleague and former 

 master Sir Astley Cooper, then in the zenith of his fame as an operator 

 and a lecturer on Surgery. Mr. Travers, unfortunately, soon found that 

 his bodily vigour was not such as would enable him to maintain his post 

 as a lecturer ; he was one night carried from the Theatre in a fainting 

 fit, from which for some time it remained doubtful whether he would 



