An introductory lecture on the anatomy, physiology, and diseases of the eye, delivered at the Birmingham Royal School of Medicine and Surgery, October 4, 1839 / by Richard Middlemore.

  • Middlemore, Richard, 1804-1891.
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An introductory lecture on the anatomy, physiology, and diseases of the eye, delivered at the Birmingham Royal School of Medicine and Surgery, October 4, 1839 / by Richard Middlemore. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    on the part of the medical student, of paying great attention to diseases of the eye, but I hope those already given will sufficiently exhibit this important fact — a fact recommended to your attention, not merely by every view of interest and every motive of policy, but by the powerful call of humanity and the energetic appeal of conscience. And here I may inquire, is it right that a class of diseases so numerous, so im- portant, so capable of illustrating general pathology, so inti- mately connected with various morbid conditions of the sys- tem, and, moreover, so calamitous in result, as are those of the eye, —is it right, I ask, that the study and management of this class of diseases, should be renounced by the profes- sion and resigned to the wisdom of empiricsI am sure your convictions will at once incline you to answer in the negative, and to intimate your approval of any arrangement, by which a greater attention shall be secured to ophthalmo- logy than that it has, as a general rule, hitherto received, at least in this country. It will be explained to you that the organ of vision is composed of a great variety of membranes, similar, in their anatomical characters, to membranes which enter into the composition of other parts and organs of the body; of some textures (as the lens, the iris, and the cornea), which are not strictly analogous to any others with which we are acquainted, and of various secretions and humours. All these parts — these somewhat numerous and extremely different parts- are closely compacted together. . Hence it happens,—that is, in right of the proximity of the membranes of the'eye to each other,-hence it happens, that there is a great tendency to an extension of inflammation when it has commenced in any one of them ; and, in consequence of the nature of their structure, they are liable to the same forms of inflammation and, generally speaking, of disease, which take place in' membranes of a like kind in other situations; and a know- c