The image on the front cover of this issue of the British Journal of Ophthalmology is from a book entitled ‘A Manual of the Diseases of The Human Eye’, intended for surgeons commencing practice from ‘The Best National and Foreign Work on the Human Eye’.

To give it proper perspective and context, it must be appreciated that the book was written 192 years ago in 1821. Credit for the book probably goes to several individuals. It was first published in German by Karl Heinrich Weller in 1819, but by his own admission he had taken much of the content from the published work of Professor Georg Beer.

An English edition of this work was published a couple of years later, …