3 Pearls From the Past

Two Scope contributors compile quotes and wisdom from medicine’s long history. Add your own favorite timeless pearls for ophthalmology in the comments or email to scope@aao.org.

“It has been said that ‘when a medical man begins to write on the history of his subject it is a sure sign of senility.’” 

— E. Treacher Collin’s preface to The History and Traditions of the Moorfields Eye Hospital (1929, pg. viii)

“In old churches are dark windows.”

— Proverb quoted by Georg Bartisch in Ophthalmodouleia (1583), translated by Donald Blanchard, MD. Among other things, the book suggested that pills of gold helped decreased, faint, dim and cloudy vision, as did the best theriac available either at the apothecary shop at the foot of Venice’s Rialto Bridge or carefully prepared by Bartisch in Dresden with all its over 100 ingredients.

“To cure sometimes, to relieve often, and to comfort always.”

— Folk saying dating at least to the 15th century. Also inscribed on a statue of the tuberculosis specialist, Edward Livington Trudeau, MD, (died 1915) at Saranac Lake, New York.