THE PROBLEM OF THE CRYSTALLINE LENS

Abstract

Herbert Spencer in his "Principles of Biology" said: "There can be no knowledge of function without a knowledge of some structure to perform function." To no other part of the human organism is this more applicable than to the crystalline lens, for there is no other anatomic structure that is more mathematical in form than the lens or so complex in composition. For this very reason there is no subject in human physiology about which more divergence of opinion has been entertained than the rôle the crystalline lens plays in the faculty of vision. A resume of the ancient and medieval ideas of anatomy and physiology with regard to the lens will show how the knowledge of ophthalmology developed by a slow evolutionary process from remote ages and will demonstrate that the progress of ophthalmology has gone pace by pace with the advance in the knowledge of the structure