SCHEME
The scheme for the "System of Ophthalmology" is as follows, but its division into different volumes is liable to alteration.
Vol. I. THE EYE IN EVOLUTION
Vol. II. THE ANATOMY OF THE VISUAL SYSTEM
Vol. III. NORMAL AND ABNORMAL DEVELOPMENT
Pt. I. Embryology
Pt. II. Congenital Deformities
Vol. IV. THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE EYE AND OF VISION
Vol. V. OPHTHALMIC OPTICS AND REFRACTION
Vol. VI. OCULAR MOTILITY AND STRABISMUS
Vol. VII. THE FOUNDATIONS OF OPHTHALMOLOGY Heredity, Pathology, Methods of Diagnosis, General Therapeutics
Vol. VIII. DISEASES OF THE OUTER EYE
Pt. I. Conjunctiva
Pt. II. Cornea and Sclera
Vol. IX. DISEASES OF THE UVEAL TRACT
Vol. X. DISEASES OF THE RETINA
Vol. XL DISEASES OF THE LENS AND VITREOUS; GLAUCOMA AND HYPOTONY
Vol. XII. NEURO-OPHTHALMOLOGY
Vol. XIII. THE OCULAR ADNEXA Lids, Lacrimal Apparatus, Orbit and Para- orbital Structures
Vol. XIV. INJURIES
Vol. XV. INDEX OF GENERAL AND SYSTEMIC OPHTHALMOLOGY
PREFACE OF THE WORK
The reception accorded to my Textbook of Ophthalmology has persuaded me that there is a need for its continuation in a second edition. The seven volumes of the Textbook took almost a quarter of a century to write, a period unfortunately longer than it might have been owing to the exigencies of war. The first four volumes have long been out of print and intentionally so because they have long been out of date. It is to be remembered that the second volume was written before the suljjhonamides were intro- duced ; the third before the antibiotics revolutionized the therapeutics of infective diseases ; both of them before the role of viruses in ocular disease was adequately appreciated ; the physiology of the eye of yesterday is unrecognizable when compared with that of today ; even the anatomy has been transformed by more elaborate optical and chemical methods of investigation and the advent of the electron microscope.
The re-writing of the whole work if its comprehensive nature were to be retained would be an immense task occupying more time than I could reasonably expect to have at my disposal. Moreover, tomorrow will be different from today, and if a work such as this is to be of any lasting value it would seem to me desirable that a new edition be published at least every fifteen or twenty years ; fortunately, ophthalmology is no static science. It therefore seemed to me wise to sliare the task of re-writing the original Textbook with my colleagues at the Institute of Ophthalmology in London. I am grateful that they have accepted this burden. For this reason I have changed the name of the book to a ''System of Ophthalmology " since it will necessary be less personal. This first volume in the new series is an extension of the first twenty pages of Volume I of the old Textbook ; this I have Titten myself, largely because it is a subject in which I am particularly interested and I wished to write it. The subject-matter has never been gathered together in a single book before and it is my hope that it will interest ophthalmologists in so far as it forms the basis of the science of vision ; and it may be that it will be of value also to those whose interest is biological rather than clinical. ; The numerous marginal sketches are not usual in a book of this type.
To the student of natural history they may seem superfluous, but to the ophthalmologist some of the animals may be unfamiliar and the drawings may perchance add meaning to the zoological nomenclature and thus give the text more life and interest. It is to be noted, however, that they are drawn not to scale, but approximately to a standard size to fit into a 1-inch margin.
Stewart Duke-Elder.
Institute of Ophthalmology, London, 1957