PREFACE. 



It is customary for the rising generation to regard the 

 Victorian Era as characterized by the wearing of preposterous 

 clothing, and by living in rooms full of ugly furniture, with 

 decorations devoid of taste. However these things may 

 have been, there can be no doubt that it was an era which 

 produced a number of scientific men of outstanding ability, 

 whose like we shall not look upon again. 



One of these great Victorian scientists was Sir William 

 Bowman, who, early in his career, earned for himself a world- 

 wide reputation by the number and accuracy of his investi- 

 gations into the minute anatomy of the various tissues of 

 the body. Some of his most important observations were 

 in connection with the minute anatomy of the eye; and 

 though originally a general surgeon, so great a repute did 

 he gain as an ophthalmologist that he was gradually forced 

 to restrict his practice to that branch of his profession. 



During the middle part of the Nineteenth Century, Bow- 

 man was the most prominent ophthalmologist in England, 

 as von Graefe was in Germany and Bonders in Holland. 

 These three distinguished men came together for the first 

 time at the Moorfields Hospital in the summer of 1851, the 

 year of the Great International Exhibition in London. 

 Linked together by the pursuit of knowledge in a branch 

 of their profession, which was at that time growing in a 

 most exciting fashion, they became the firmest of friends 



