Charles Snyder

As It Was in the Beginning: An Informal History of the New England Ophthalmological Society

In the mid-17th century, James Ussher, Archbishop of the Church of Ireland, calculated that the heavens and the earth were created in the year 4004 BC. That the good bishop was in error by several million, perhaps billion years, was not the fault of his scholarship, that was rated among the best of his time, rather, blame must be placed on the paucity of information available to him. No such excuse can be ours in preparing this story of the creation of the New England Ophthalmological Society. The officers and secretaries of the past kept records, not voluminous ones, but accurate ones. These have been ours to use. These records tell us that unlike the heavens and the earth, the creation of the New England Ophthalmological Society was first proposed, and then the act of creation took place. The proposers of creation, three in number, were Hasket Derby, Benjamin Joy

THE SUFFIX CAINE-Reply

To the Editor. —Concerning the suffix,caine. For the moment forget it and concentrate on the suffix - ine or - in . According to Webster this suffix is used in forming the names of certain elements, as chlor ine , and of compounds, as arsine . Names of basic organic substances, as alkaloids, are systematically written with the ending - ine . The Indians of Bolivia and Peru have for centuries kept themselves happy by chewing the leaves of a certain bush. They called the bush, among other things, cuca or coca . The standard botanical name for the bush is Erythroxylum coca . In 1855 Dr. F. Gaedcke, a German chemist, separated an alkaloid from coca leaves which he called erythroxline . In doing this he was following the standard practice of using the family name and adding the suffix for alkaloids - ine . He did not have enough leaves to continue his experiments, so he stopped midway. From 1858

A bibliography of the history of ophthalmology; 1955 and 1956.

In the March, 1956, issue of the A. M. A.Archives of Ophthalmologythe first bibliography of this series appeared. Unlike the other ophthalmic subjects which are reviewed in this journal, the history of ophthalmology does not lend itself readily to the annual review type of article. The field, embracing as it does all the aspects of the specialty and its allied sciences, is too broad. For this reason, the form of a bibliography is used to bring to the attention of interested readers the large amount of work done in this field. Over two hundred titles taken, for the most part, from readily available medical and scientific journals and books are listed under various subject headings. The titles are translated into English, with the original language indicated by a capital letter at the close of the reference. Standard abbreviations are used for the journal names. The period covered by

A Bibliography of the History of Ophthalmology: 1952 through 1954

This bibliography of the history of ophthalmology has been compiled with the needs of two groups of readers in mind. The first group are those readers who want, from time to time, to spend hours of quiet pleasure exploring the past of the specialty of ophthalmology; for them this bibliography can serve as a reading list. The second group, scholars and medical historians, will find, it is hoped, that the bibliography is a tool that will spare them hours of tedious work. The material is arranged under subject headings, and in two instances under subheadings as well. Standard abbreviations are used for the journal titles. Only articles that have appeared in medical and scientific journals have been included, and all these journals can be obtained in medical libraries in the United States. The titles of the articles have been translated into English, and the original language has been indicated by