Abstract
MEDICINE is both an art and a science. To those who are most interested in it as a science, the history of medicine is peculiarly lacking in inspiration. Even from this point of view ophthalmology, perhaps by virtue of its dependence upon optics and neurology, is less sterile than most other branches of the subject. Even in the thirteenth century Robert Grosseteste “neglected altogether the books of Aristotle and by his own experiments … employed himself in the scientific questions which Aristotle had treated”. But most of the ophthalmologists of whom the author writes in this admirable book were advertisers and quacks. This is true of most of the Royal oculists of the eighteenth century, such as Sir William Read, Queen Anne's oculist, who was the son of a cobbler, and his successor, Roger Grant, who “rested his pretensions to practise ophthalmology on the fact that he had lost an eye in the Emperor's service in the continental wars; thus reversing the case of the gladiator alluded to by Martial:
Studies in the History of Ophthalmology in England prior to the Year 1800.
By R. Rutson James. (Published for the British Journal of Ophthalmology.) Pp. x + 255 + 9 plates. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1933.) 15s. net.
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Studies in the History of Ophthalmology in England prior to the Year 1800. Nature 132, 839 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/132839a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/132839a0