This work is part of the Documenta Ophthalmologica series and is divided into three parts: biographies of famous personalities; the history of ideas in ophthalmology and visual sciences; ophthalmology in art and literature.

This volume contains articles on the history of ophthalmology.

Divided into five sections, this book considers the history of ideas in ophthalmology and visual sciences; biographies of researchers in ophthalmology; the history of academic institutions involved in ophthalmology; ophthalmology in antiquity; and oral history in ophthalmology.

When the eyeball is indented in total darkness, within less than 200 mil liseconds an oval or quarter-moon shaped spot of light is perceived in the part of the visual field corresponding to the indented region of the retina. In the seconds following, this phosphene extends across the whole visual field and alters in structure during further eyeball indentation. It is then seen as irregular large bright spots of light, finely structured moving light grains ('light nebula') and stationary bright stars. Regular geometrical patterns appear only when both eyes are indented simultaneously 1]. When...

This volume includes case histories (Adolf Hitler and John Milton), biographies (William Thomson, Joseph Woodward, E.J. Curran, Pope John XXI, George McClellan and A.E. Krill), an oral history and the history of the National Eye Institute.