The History & Traditions of the Moorfields Eye Hospital

CHAPTER I. The Founders and Foundation

THE FOUNDERS AND FOUNDATION

In the board room of the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital hangs a framed document in which the names of Saunders, Farre, and Battley are associated as being the first promoters of the institution.

Who were these three men? What brought them together? And how came they to establish an institution unlike any which had previously existed?

John Cunningham Saunders was born and bred in Devonshire; he first saw the light of day at Levistone on October 10th, 1773. He went to school at Tavistock and South Molton, and at the age of seventeen commenced a five years’ apprenticeship to Mr. John Hill, surgeon, of Barnstaple. It was during his apprenticeship that he had his first introduction to ophthalmic surgery, for Mr. Hill, though only a country practitioner, was bold enough in those pre-anæsthetic days to operate for cataract. It was from him also that Saunders first learnt the value of the use of belladonna for dilatation of the pupil. William Adams, who also became an ophthalmic surgeon, was likewise a pupil of Mr. John Hill, but of him more anon.

Saunders, at the expiration of his apprenticeship, came to London to complete his medical education at the then combined borough schools of St. Thomas’s and Guy’s Hospitals. The skill and diligence which he displayed in the dissecting room, together with his deftness as a draftsman, soon attracted the attention of Astley Cooper, who was then rapidly rising into fame. On Cooper’s election to the chair of anatomy in 1797, he offered to take Saunders into his house and make him a demonstrator of anatomy on the terms shown in the following letter:

“Dear Sir,

“I ought long since to have informed you of my plan for the winter, so far as it concerns you, and as I have been able to decide.

“It is my wish that you should lodge and board in my house. I have informed you that I live in a plain and economical style, and that you are only to expect a joint of meat and a pudding; if this will satisfy you, a bed will be ready whenever you return to London.

“I can say nothing about the salary you are to receive, for I have not been able to form any idea of what will be proper, or how much you may expect; all I can say is that the sum shall be annually increased, which at the same time as it may act as a stimulus to you, and make it an object to proceed in your career, will be more convenient to myself, because, if no stroke of adverse fortune prevents it, my income must be yearly improving.

“It is my wish that you should dissect for lecture-work in Comparative Anatomy, and assist in my preparations. With respect to the first of these, the labour is certain, and all other occupations and objects must yield to it; with regard to the latter, the quantum of employment shall be guided by your feelings. It is a duty I have performed, without injury to my health, with much amusement, and great advantage.

“I am in hopes that you will have no objection to giving me three months’ information if any other pursuit should lead you to quit the situation, as otherwise, I may be unable to procure a substitute, and suffer great inconvenience from the want of one.”

Saunders accepted the offer, and was shortly afterwards appointed the demonstrator of anatomy at St. Thomas’s Hospital. His association with Astley Cooper proved an exceedingly happy one, he on several occasions being entrusted with the charge of Cooper’s patients during his absence in the country. Saunders was evidently a good teacher, and possessed of a most attractive personality, so that he became exceedingly popular with the students, who on several occasions presented him with pieces of plate as a token of their regard.

John Richard Farre was two years younger than Saunders, being born in Barbados in 1775, where he was educated, and commenced the study of medicine under his father. He came to England in 1792 to complete his studies at St. Thomas’s and Guy’s Hospitals. The commencement of his acquaintance with Saunders and Battley may best be given in his own words:

“In 1792 I entered as a dresser at Guy’s Hospital. At that time Sir Astley Cooper had, by his open manner, become well known among the pupils, but I was not intimate with him, until after my return, in 1794, from the expedition in which I served under Lord Moria. I then became more particularly acquainted with him in the following manner.

“About the year 1798, Sir Astley excited great zeal in the prosecution of minute anatomy, and the order of the day became the injection of the absorbents, and the dissection of parts concerned in operations, especially those of hernia. It was at this time that my acquaintance commenced with Mr. Saunders and Mr. Battley, who were both engaged in the dissecting room. So earnest were we all in the pursuit of the subjects above described, that Mr. Saunders and myself became jaundiced, in consequence of the continually constrained position to which we were subjected, while leaning over bodies under dissection.

“Mr. Saunders also suffered from a punctured wound of the finger received while dissecting, which was followed by extensive inflammation of the arm; nor did this subside until nearly two hundred leeches had been applied.”

Richard Battley was older than his two friends, having been born at Wakefield in 1770; he was educated at the Grammar School there, and subsequently became the pupil of a physician in that town. For a while he studied at the Infirmary in Newcastle-on-Tyne, and came to London in 1795. Entering as a pupil at St. Thomas’s Hospital at the same time as Saunders, a close and lasting intimacy sprang up between the two men.

Having thus brought these three men together from Devonshire, Bermuda, and Wakefield to the dissecting room at St. Thomas’s Hospital, it next becomes necessary to trace the circumstances which led them to start the “London Dispensary for Curing Diseases of the Eye and Ear,” the name by which the present “Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital” was first known.

In 1800, when twenty-seven years of age, Saunders became anxious about his future prospects. His ambition prompted him with the desire to practise as a surgeon in London; probably also about this time influences began to work which made him desire to settle down with an assured income, so that he might enter into the state of matrimony. There was little prospect of his obtaining any higher appointment than that of demonstrator of anatomy in the hospital at which he was working, the custom in the old-established hospitals at that time being to select for the staff appointments a pupil of one of their surgeons, and one who had been articled at the Royal College of Surgeons for at least six years. Saunders had not been so articled, having served his apprenticeship in the country. He was not, therefore, eligible to compete against those who had proceeded in the recognised manner, no matter how great his merits. This was pointed out to him by Astley Cooper, who advised him in his own interests to seek some other means of support. Saunders then resigned his post as demonstrator of anatomy and took over the practice of a surgeon in Gravesend.

Astley Cooper, however, soon began to miss his able assistant, and found that the other arrangements he had made, which had to some extent caused Saunders to take offence, did not work smoothly. He therefore wrote him the following letter, and induced Saunders’ friend Battley to go to Gravesend to use his influence in persuading him to resume his old post:

“LONDON,

“July 28th, 1801.

“Dear Sir,

“I have so often explained my reasons for the change which I made last winter at the Hospital, that I consider it as almost unnecessary to say anything further upon the subject. The trial has been made; Mr. D——has been weighed against you in the balance, and been found wanting.

“His excessive vanity has disgusted, his want of perseverance has disappointed me, and I feel most thoroughly convinced that his abilities are inadequate to the task which has been assigned to him.

“I felt it my duty to act as I have done, and my conduct, I fear, has been the cause of uneasiness to you; but as our separation was not the effect of misconduct upon your part, or of any disapprobation on mine, I hope we shall be again united in the pursuit of medical science, and that we shall entertain for each other that respect and esteem which I must ever feel for you.

“As I told you in our last conversation, I have ever felt a degree of veneration for your acquirements and abilities, which has made me diffident in expressing my wishes. But as you have now courted it, I will say, that I have wished to see you join in the debates of Guy’s Medical Society. The capability of expressing our ideas in public is a source of more power than anything with which I am acquainted. It is the road to bring a public teacher to character and to fortune.

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