Congress proceedings

Rudolf Guthoff Manja.Bechert@med.uni-rostock.de Illustration techniques in ophthalmology 200 years ago – clinical foundations of the Rostock collection of artificial eyes from ~ 1870 Latest research has demonstrated that the “Rostock collection of artificial eyes” is predominantly based on illustrations of Vol. 4 of A.-P. Demour textbook and “TRAITÉ DES MALADIES DES YEUX” from 1818. The Rostock collection gives a 3-D overview of anterior segment eye pathology in 135 examples. These presentation analysis illustration techniques applied in the Demour Atlas and traces to some extent back the painters, engravers involved in the production of the book. It could be demonstrated that the illustrations are printed from copper etchings made in stipping technique (“Punktmanier”). For printing they were pigmented with a wide colour palette in the “à la poupie technique” to achieve a one-step colour print. Each print was individually and delicately coloured with minute brushes to accentuate or newly create details such as blood vessels and iris pigment. The quality of the illustrations has been praised by the contemporaries and is still a matter of admiration. Danny Hirsch-Kauffmann Jokl dhj6@cumc.columbia.edu Hermann Knapp and Hermann von Helmholtz: Their last meeting in New York, 1893 Hermann Knapp had opened a private eye clinic in Heidelberg in 1862, which also served as a teaching place for the university’s students. However, he has not been able to achieve recognition as a “university eye clinic” and vocation as a professor over the years. In 1868 he left as Heidelberg Professor and immigrated to the USA. Highly unusual in any case – but astounding for a German professor – to resign at the age of 36 his professorship and open a private Ophthalmic and Aural Institute in the country of America and in its, arguably most competitive city New York. Within 1 year he founded the Archives of Ophthalmology and otology in 1869, both a German edition and English one, becoming editor of the latter, a role he would keep until his death in 1911 at the age of 79. He was appointed a professor at New York University, 12 years later and after 6 years he resigned to assume a professorship with lecture responsibility at Columbia University in 1888, while maintaining a high volume private practice, an innovative designer of medical instruments, he was admitted in 1870 to the prestigious American Ophthalmological Society in 1870 delivering there 37 papers where in the course of his career he delivered in 1879 a founder of the Section of Ophthalmology, Otology and Otolaryngology within the American Medical Association and published over 100 papers. He founded a family of ophthalmologists, His son Arnold who first studied with Fuchs in Vienna and assumed the editorship of the Archives at his father’s death and his grandson Phillip whose strabismus career began with Burian in Iowa – both continuing their careers at Columbia. Knapp received funding from none other than Hermann von Helmholtz in his Heidelberg period. On the occasion of the “World Electrical Congress,” which took place in Chicago in August 1893, in which industrialists, scientists and academics – all with the desire to establish standards for electrical units – participated, Hermann von Helmholtz also went to America and also meeting with his old friend Knapp in New York. The lecture will address Helmholtz’s stations and encounters during his trip to the USA. Paulus T.V.M. de Jong, Amsterdam, Leiden, The Netherlands p.dejong@nin.knaw.nl Two thousand years needed to understand myopia. Around 350 BC, Aristotle mentioned the combination of frequent blinking, squeezing the eyelids, proptosis, near vision, and micrography. At that time, one had no idea about refraction and explained seeing by emanation (light emitting from the eye) or undulation (light from objects reaching the eye). Concave glasses appeared around 1300 and their diverging effect on a light beam was published 300 years later. Still, great myopic scientists like Kepler or Purkynje oversaw that myopic eyes could accommodate and thus there remained a lot of confusion around hyperopia, emmetropia, and myopia. Donders wrote around 1850 how one could proof that accommodation occurred in the STRABISMUS 2019, VOL. 27, NO. 1, 32–34 https://doi.org/10.1080/09273972.2019.1559531