Museum of Vision

Due to ill health, Dr. Henry Willard Williams spent seven years working in the counting rooms on Central Wharf in Boston before he was well enough to enter medical school.  After entering school, Williams spent three years in Europe studying medicine in various cities and eventually earned his medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 1849.  Dr. Williams immediately limited his practice to ophthalmology and a year later was asked back to Harvard to teach the first course on ophthalmology at the medical school.  Williams would give this course for the next 16 years.

In 1864 Dr. Henry Williams was appointed to the Boston City Hospital and in 1871 he was named the first chair of the new ophthalmology department of Harvard Medical School.  Dr. Williams was a prolific writer of journal articles and published several books.  In addition, Williams was the first to use a single waxed silk suture to close a cataract wound in 1866.