These Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress on the Cornea continue a tradition of summarizing the state-of-the art basic and clinical research in cornea and ex- ternal diseases since the first Congress was held in 1964. Reflecting the emerging impor- tance of refractive surgery, two of the twelve sessions of the Congress were devoted to refractive surgery; this is reflected in an emphasis in these Proceedings. In addition, an en- tire session was devoted to the molecular and cellular biology of the cornea with impor- tant new information on the role of growth factors and cytokine...