The diagnosis and treatment of the diseases of the eye.

Williams, Henry Willard, 1821-1895.

Boston : Houghton Mifflin & Company, 1881 ;
London : Sampson, Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1882.

Description : [i]-xii p., [front.], 1-464 p., [3 l. pl.], 6 l. pl. ; ill.: 1 photo, 2 chromo, 38 engrs., 6 chrts. (part fold.) ; 22.5 cm.

Photograph : 1 leaf, phototype of a diagnostic instrument.

Photographer : Frederick Gutekunst (1831-1917).

Subject : Eye — Diseases; diagnosis.

Notes :

• Second edition, 1886.
• Classics of Ophthalmology Library edition, 1986.
• Author caption: HENRY W. WILLIAMS, A.M., M.D. Professor of Ophthalmology in Harvard University; Ophthalmic Surgeon to the City Hospital, Boston; Ex-president of the American Ophthalmological Society; Vice-president of the International Ophthalmological Congress, London, 1872; Member of the Heidelberger Ophthalmologische Gesellschaft; Foreign Honorary Fellow of the Edinburgh Medico-chirurgical Society; President Of The Massachusetts Medical Society; Honorary Fellow of the Rhode Island Medical Society and of the New Hampshire Medical Society; Fellow of the American Academy of Arts And Sciences.
• Taught the first course of clinical ophthalmology in America at Harvard, 1851.
• Appointed, first ophthalmologist of Boston City Hospital, 1865-1891.
• Boylston prize essay, Recent Advances in Ophthalmic Science, 1865.
• Professor of ophthalmology, Harvard Medical School, 1868-1871.
• Chair of Harvard Ophthalmology, 1871-1891.
• President, Massachusetts Medical Society, 1880-1882.
• President, American Ophthalmological Society, 1869-1872.
• Founder and benefactor of the Williams Professorship of Ophthalmology, Harvard, 1891.
• Inscribed: Dr. J [ohn] Crowell [1823-1890] with regards of H. W. Williams.
• Cordasco 80-6830.
• GM 5878: for treatment of iritis (1856).
• GM 5895: suture in cataract extraction (1865-72).
• Photo caption: Phototype, F. Gutekunst (inscribed in negative).
• Index Medicus: 10404821170, 11604631360.

Dr. William Thomson, of Philadelphia, has devised "an instrument for the detection of color-blindness," which is so simple an adaptation of Holmgren's method, and so admirably suited and convenient for its purpose, that I have obtained his permission to reproduce the photograph of the instrument, which was exhibited at the last meeting of the American Ophthalmological Society, and has since, after practical testing of its efficiency, been ordered by the Pennsylvania Railroad to be used in an examination which has been directed to be made of the thirty-five thousand men employed on its extended lines. It is approved by the Railroad Commissioners of Massachusetts.—Page 247.

Williams advocated against mercurial treatment of iritis even in cases of syphilis and recommended infusions of mild potassium iodide with atropia sulfate as a myriadic. His greatest achievement, for which he received the Boylston Prize, was the introduction of corneal flap suturing in cataract surgery, implementing a very fine quarter inch long sewing needle that was threaded with a single strand of glover's silk and held by blunted forceps. The photograph represents the first successful kit for Holmgren's test of color blindness, commissioned by the United States Government in 1879 for the screening of railway employees. Dr. Fithiof Holmgren (1831-1897) was a Swedish physiologist known for his studies of retinal response to electric stimuli. However, it was a Philadelphia ophthalmologist, Dr. William Thomson (1833–1907) of Jefferson Medical College, who perfected and commercialized Holmgren's proof of concept.