Page:Introductory lecture delivered to the class of military surgery in the University of Edinburgh, May 1, 1855 (IA b21916469).pdf/31

30 declaration to make, that he was unable to draw his salary.

On another occasion, when the ophthalmia spread far and wide amongst the soldiery in this country, after the return of the army from Egypt, when the civil part of the population became alarmed for their eyesight, and when an enormous burden had been thrown upon the public by the number of men pensioned for blindness, a distinguished oculist from civil life, the late Sir William Adams, was placed at the head of a large and expensive ophthalmic hospital in the Regent's Park; what was the result? "It cannot," says Dr. Vetch, "fail to. surprise every impartial mind to observe, that even from the report of Sir William Adams himself, so far from effecting a national saving of £60,000 per annum, which he had promised, by a reduction of the ophthalmic pensioners, not one has been sufficiently benefited to admit of his pension being either reduced or taken away; and of six soldiers included in the report, all of them, cases of opaque cornea, combined with the second stage of Egyptian ophthalmia, not one has been rendered fit for duty, and all have been added to the list of pensioners." It is, most assuredly, not with any idea of under-rating the attainments of my