"MRS. M'BEATH. Suffered for many years past from a disease combining the characters of conjunctival and sclerotic ophthalmia. The prussic acid was applied, daily, for about three weeks, and at the expiration of that time the redness and angry appearance of the eye disappeared; the organ looked clear and healthy, and no pain whatever was felt. The patient can bear a bright light without uneasiness, and is now free from any symptom of her former ailment. "Thurso, Caithness, Dec. 20, 1842." Extracted from the _London Medical Gazette_, of January 13th, 1843:-- PRUSSIC ACID IN DISEASED CORNEA. "_To the Editor of the Medical Gazette._ "Perth, December 31st, 1842. "SIR,--If you deem the following case of diseased cornea, &c., worthy of a place in the _Medical Gazette_, I shall feel myself obliged, while I have the honour to be, &c. &c., "G. K. H. PATERSON, "Surgeon." "CASE.--M. J., æt. 29, of a strumous diathesis, has been repeatedly attacked with inflammation in both eyes alternately, accompanied with more or less intolerance of light, and pain of head, ever since she had small-pox, about her ninth year: to relieve this her friends sought various means, but without any avail, and on entering her eighteenth year she became blind. The catamenia had never appeared before she was twenty; and from that period onwards, till about four years ago, menstruation had always been scanty, and attended with the usual symptoms of dysmenorrhœa. "On the 28th September, 1842, her eyes presented the following state:--The right cornea transparent, with an unusual quantity apparently of aqueous humour on the anterior chamber, so as to give it externally a somewhat conical aspect; iris of a dark red colour, and its pupillary edge contracted to the size of a pin-hole, and in close contact with the capsule of the lens. No vision in this eye remaining. That of the left cornea was all but opaque, from coagulated lymph between its layers, with the exception of a small lucid segment, at the upper and outer margin of its circumference; behind which, on the eye being turned downward and inward, the pupil could be seen contracted also, and of an oblong shape, along with a great increase of aqueous humour in the anterior chamber, and the cornea, to external appearance, much more bulged forward than that of the right. With this eye she could only distinguish an object when it was rolled downward and toward the inner canthus, on being passed between her and the light.