200 RECENT PROGRESS OF THE THEORY OF VISION. 



that remarkable progress which ophthalmic medicine has 

 made during the last twenty years — a progress which 

 for its rapidity and scientific character is perhaps without 

 parallel in the history of the healing art. 



Every lover of his kind must rejoice in these achieve- 

 ments which ward off or remove so much misery that 

 formerly we were powerless to help, but a man of science 

 has peculiar reason to look on them with pride. For 

 this wonderful advance has not been achieved by groping 

 and lucky finding, but by deduction rigidly followed out, 

 and tlius carries with it the pledge of still future suc- 

 cesses. As once astronomy was the pattern from which 

 the other sciences learned how the right method will 

 lead to success, so does ophthalmic medicine now dis- 

 play how much may be accomplished in the treatment 

 of disease by extended application of well-understood 

 methods of investigation and accurate insight into the 

 causal connection of phenomena. It is no wonder that 

 the right sort of men were drawn to an arena which 

 offered a prospect of new and noble victories over the 

 opposing powers of nature to the true scientific spirit — 

 tlie spirit of patient and cheerful work. It was because 

 there were so many of them that the success was so 

 brilliant. Let me be permitted to name out of the 

 whole number a representative of each of the three 

 nations of common origin which have contributed most 

 to the result : Von Grraefe in Grermany, Donders in 

 Holland, and Bowman in England. 



There is -another point of view from which this advance 

 in ophthalmology may be regarded, and that with equal 

 satisfaction. Schiller says of science : — 



AVer uni die Gottin freit, suche in ihr nicht das Weib.^ 

 }Vho ivoos the goddess must not hope the wife. 



• From Schiller's Spruche. Literally, ' Let not him who seeks the love 

 of a goddess expect to find in her the woman.' 



