Bartisch's Contributions to Ophthalmology

The title page of Georg Bartisch's Ophthalmodouleia indicated that the book was protected against reprinting for ten years. In the event it was not reprinted till 103 years later. The present facsimile reproduction has come after nearly 400 years-an event that the pious and superstitious Bartisch would probably have ascribed to a happy juxtaposition of the stars on the 'Wednesday after Palm Sunday in the year 1583 after the birth of our Saviour', when the book was launched. However, the juxtaposition of three rather more mundane influences, can also be mooted. In the first place the book 'the like of which has never before seen the light of day' was indeed exceptional in being the first systematic book on diseases of the eye to appear in the vernacular, all previous treatises having been brought out in the ancient tongues, including Hebrew and Arabic. Bartisch's German text antedated Jacques Guillemeau's Des Maladies de l'Oeil qui sont au nombre de cent treize by two years and Richard Banister's Breviary on the Eyes by thirty-nine years. Secondly, Bartisch's book contains much useful information-mostly of an incidental character-on the practice of the specialty in his century. But it is more for its form than for its teaching that the book has remained memorable. Matthes Stockel of Dresden made an outstanding job of the production of Bartisch's text and illustrations. The folio runs to 629 beautifully printed pages, of which fifty-six were devoted to preliminary matter and sixteen to a concluding Table of