Bruch’s Membrane: The Critical Boundary in Macular Degeneration

Abstract

In the early second century A.D., the Roman Empire had reached its zenith. The pax romana extended to all the lands touching the Mediterranean, counterclockwise from Northern Africa to Palestine, through Asia Minor, Gaul and Hispania, all the way to modern Wales and England. This last province of Britannia was visited by the emperor Hadrian, where he put on a show of force in response to a recent uprising. Most famously, during this visit Hadrian ordered the construction of a set of earthworks that now bears his name, stretching nearly eighty miles from Carlisle to Newcastle. Studded with fortifications, and manned with highly trained foreign legionnaires, this imposing structure stretched the width of the island and its ruins are impressive still today (Figure 1). While there is disagreement about the principal purpose of Hadrian’s Wall—whether primarily as a symbolic marker of the northern extent of the Empire, a defensive fortification, or as a means of regulating commerce—the Historia Augusta states that the wall was constructed qui barbaros Romanosque divideret; to separate the Romans from the Barbarians(Magie, 1921).