SADE Donatien-Alphonse-François, marquis de (1740-1814).

Lot 175
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Estimation :
3000 - 3500 EUR
SADE Donatien-Alphonse-François, marquis de (1740-1814).
L.A., [Vincennes dungeon] May 22, 1783, [to his eye doctors]; 2 pages in-4. Letter from prison to his eye doctors, while suffering from the onset of blindness. [Sade was treated by the oculists Henri and Guillaume GRANDJEAN and Antoine DEMOURS fils]. "The prescribed powder was used for four days in a row, and the effects it produced, which we will describe, forced us to suspend the treatment until further explanation from the oculists. The situation making the administration of the said powder impossible by the operation of the breath, one has made up for it by throwing it oneself into the eye, it has produced a prodigious irritation, it has considerably inflamed all the small vessels of the white of the eye, and has made this part all red. With regard to the opacity of which one hoped the reduction by the use of this powder, very far from accellerating the reduction or the end of it it put back, the squint of the eye, or the thickness of the gauze, to the same state or it was in the beginnings, and following the great pains produced by the accident". He suspended the treatment and asked "Messieurs les oculistes" to come back to see him, or at least to answer his questions in the meantime: "Is the effect that one experiences natural? And in spite of what is unpleasant, should we expect relief by continuing? Or should we change the remedy". In the meantime, he stopped the treatment "except for the colire injections at the rate of two per day"...
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