688 Mr. Ernest Clarke [June 9, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, June 9, 1916. 



The Hon. Richakd Clere Parsons, M.A. M.Inst.O.E. M.I.Mech.E., 



Yice-President, in the Chair. 



Ernest Clarke, M.D. F.R.C.S. 



Eyesight and the War. 



"When the War is over the Dutch will be celebrating at Lejden or 

 Utrecht the centenary of the birth of Bonders, the great Dutch 

 ophthalmologist, and as our subject this evening is mostly concerned 

 with refraction and with Donders' great work, I thought it fitting 

 to remind you of this. If a man's fame and the endurance of that 

 fame are judged by the amount of good he has done to his fellow- 

 creatures, then I consider that no one has a bigger claim than this 

 grand old Hollander. In 1864 he published in English — it was 

 never published in Dutch— his work on the Accommodation and 

 Ptefraction of the Eye. That work soon became — and it has 

 remained up to the present day — a classic. To celebrate the fiftieth 

 anniversary of the appearance of this work, I brought out two years 

 ago a small book, in which I set forth the work that Donders had 

 done and indicated the progress made since, and as a small return 

 compliment I published that first in Dutch. It was dedicated to 

 the Dutch Ophthalmologists, and was very well received by them, 

 but unfortunately the War intervened, and all communications were 

 stopped. 



Where Donders found chaos and ignorance he left order and 

 knowledge, and so perfect was the foundation he laid that not one 

 of his important statements has been upset even at the present day. 

 On that perfect foundation we who have followed him have been 

 able to raise a superstructure of which I am perfectly certain he 

 would have approved. 



One of the important subjects that Donders threw more light 

 upon was that of Myopia, or short-sight. He showed that it was the 

 over-developed eye, or too long eye, and that it was the opposite 

 of the Hypermetropic or under-developed eye. [Diagrams were here 

 shown of the Emmetropic, or normal eye, and the Hypermetropic 

 and Myopic eye, and the manner in which parallel rays of hght 

 are received on their respective re tinge.] You will see from the 



