950 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF OPHTHALMOLOGY JUNE, 1968

ings of this study indicate the direction for further advances in the prevention of blind­ness in children. Fifty per cent of the blind­ness reported in the study is acquired; this proportion can be expected to decrease with advances in medical and obstetric care. For the remaining 50 per cent, the problem is the prevention of blindness of genetic origin.

We believe this book is a major contribu­tion to the study of human genetics as well as human blindness. A valuable bibliography of the literature is provided.

John W. Ferree Elizabeth M. Hatfield

RENAISSANCE DER AUGENHEILKUNDE 1540-1630. By Huldrych M. Koelbing. Berne, Switzerland, Hans Huber, Publishers, 1967. Paperbound, 198 pages. In contrast to its rather misleading title

the contents of this book consist of a Basel

eye-view of ophthalmology around the turn of the seventeenth century. Put in another way, the book consists of an historical ac­count of the contributions to ophthalmology of Felix Platter, his immediate antecedents, and some of his contemporaries.

Since Platter's most significant contribu­tion to visual science was the recognition that the optical image fell on the retina, the material is not uninteresting. Other ideas of Platter and his contemporaries about the treatment of eye disease are also presented in some detail, always with emphasis on indi­viduals who lived in Switzerland and partic­ularly in Basel.

Within the limitations of these particular ground rules the treatment is scholarly. Thus for one seeking a view of this aspect of medical history the book can be recom­mended.

Albert M. Potts

OPHTHALMIC MINIATURE

. . . that terrifying giant, Polyphemus, the Cyclops, the blinding of whose only eye by Odysseus is Homer's contribution to ophthalmology in litera­ture. His family the Cyclopes have an ancient infamy for us in that they were the smiths who hammered out the thunder-bolt wherewith Zeus slew Asclepius; and in revenge we named for them those tragic median-eyed beings who are monsters from birth. Into this gallery of immortals one mere man has climbed to secure a firm but unhallowed foothold. Strabo, a geographer of Alexandria, had such a peculiarly horrific and unbecoming squint that in strabismus his name has achieved immortality without any pretension to divinity.

G. P. Crookes, Ophthalmologica Tr. Ophth. Soc. U. K. 84:259, 1964