Just one decade ago, Fukala called the ophthalmic surgeons of the world from the safe retreat of surgical conservatism, into which they had been so effectually scared thirty years previously by the disastrous experience of Mooren. He presented to the Wiener Medicinische Gesellschaft, two cases of excessive myopia on which he had successfully operated. But Lister had come and dispelled the shadows of sepsis, in which Mooren had probably done his work. Fukala, made brave by the experience of the preceding few years, worked in an entirely different light. The difference between Mooren and Fukala was the difference between sepsis and asepsis, and in no surgical work is the difference, as gauged by practical results, greater than in ophthalmic surgery.
The past ten years have contributed much to the elaboration of our knowledge concerning excessive myopia and its surgical treatment. Extravagant claims by enthusiasts and the lay press on the