Table 1.
Surgeons who treated corneal opacities.
| Year | Surgeon: comment |
|---|---|
| 1611 | Francisco Drago in Mexico “removed pterygia [extirpar carnosidades]”4 |
| 1761 | “Doctor Hugh Tomb . . . lately arrived from Ireland . . . was educated at the university of Edenburgh, and has practised in Physick, Surgery & Midwifry, for three years in Ireland . . . he engages to cure . . . filtrims on the eyes, commonly call’d Pearls . . .” Philadelphia82 |
| 1771 | James Graham: A woman from Bound Brook, New Jersey described Graham “curing my son of a film over his right eye, occasioned by the small-pox, so that he has now recovered his sight perfectly”83 |
| 1773 | Francis Mercier. “. . . undertakes to cure . . . Purls, Redness . . .”84 |
| 1774 | Anthony Yeldall: “An Eye Powder . . . for taking off specks, films, webs, &c. (if not mixt with the horny or outward coat) of the eye”85 |
| 1776 | Frederick William Jericho: “Remedy for the Gravel, . . . Films, Spots, Weakness of the Eyes”86 |
| 1778 | Frederick Carle Pflag (Friedrich Carl Pflug) Philadelphia, New York87,88 |
| 1791 | Peter Degravers: Jamaica89 |
| 1793 | Mason Fitch Cogswell: Hartford. One Miss Williams of Brooklyn, New York requested “the removal of a film or an opaque tumor from the eyes”90 |
| 1799 | “Dr. G. W. Adlersterren, from Lancaster, Formerly Surgeon in the Hospitals of the Emperor of Germany . . . He undertakes to cure . . . Film over the Eye . . . He practices Surgery and Midwifery.” Alexandria, Virginia91 |
| William Baynham: Essex, Virginia. “I had operated on your Servant Tom’s Eyes . . . The tumor in the left Eye is . . . incurable; and a growing film in the right threatens to overspread the transparent Cornea”92 | |
| 1801 | Charles F Bartlett, Newport93: “. . . an experienced operator in the eyes, by removing blindness occasioned by cataracts, films, &c”94 |