Page:A manual and atlas of medical ophthalmoscopy.djvu/8

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iv
PREFACE.

one or two exceptions, specified on p. 321, the drawings were all made by the direct method of examination.

The cases appended are for the most part those of which the ophthalmoscopic appearances are figured in the plates. A few others, which furnish examples of important facts, have been added. The majority are published now for the first time. Many are suggestive in their medical as well as in their ophthalmoscopic aspects, and, since the work is designed especially for medical workers, the general symptoms are narrated, and in some cases, their significance is briefly pointed out. The descriptions of the cases have been abbreviated, as much as was practicable, from more lengthy reports. The ophthalmic surgeon may miss some details in the notes of the ocular condition, but those which are absent are, I trust, for the most part unimportant.

I have included in the appendix three pages of test-types, partly for the convenience of medical workers who may not possess other test-types. The in these types corresponds exactly to the 5 (metre— the old 1½ feet) of Snellen.

In the preparation of the systematic part of the work I have been much indebted to the writings of Dr. Hughlings Jackson, the value and suggestiveness of which it is difficult to exaggerate; to Dr. Clifford Allbutt's important work on "The Ophthalmoscope in Diseases of the Nervous System and of the Kidneys to the writings of Leber, for the most part summarized in his excellent treatise on Diseases of the Optic Nerve and Retina, in the "Handbuch" of Graefe and Saemisch; and to the account by Forster, in the same work, of the connection between morbid states of the eye and of the general system.

I have to express my thanks to several colleagues and friends who have kindly allowed me to make and publish drawings of cases under their care, and have referred, in the several places, to the help thus afforded. To two of my colleagues, Dr. Radcliffe and Dr. Hughlings Jackson, I am particularly indebted for the readiness with which they have permitted me to use my notes and drawings of cases under their care, in the charge or observation of which I have