Physiology of the eye: clinical application

Historical Significance: This book was first published in 1950 and ran to 9 editions, the last in 1992. From the 5th edition it was titled Adler's physiology of the eye and Adler was joined by Robert Moses for 3 editions and William Hart for two. The museum also holds the 3rd edition 1959 (Cat No 502) and a precursor book by Adler, Clinical physiology of the eye. published in 1933 (Cat No 506). This book was a standard text for optometry and ophthalmology students for many years, although its bias to ophthalmological interest and its superficiality in some aspects made it less suitable for optometry. Adler was born 1895 in Philadelphia, studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and embarked on a career of physiology and ophthalmology. He was Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Pennsylvania from 1936 to 1960. He was Editor of the AMA Arch Ophthalmol from 1950 to 1960. He has some 42 papers to his credit on PubMed but few of these are research publications. He was more a clinician and a distiller of information than a researcher. He was much honoured in his profession and received the Proctor medal in 1968, See Invest Ophthal 1968; 7: at URLhttp://www.iovs.org/cgi/reprint/7/1/2.pdf for more details of his career. The Proctor Medal is awarded by the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology to honor outstanding research of senior scientists in the basic or clinical sciences as applied to ophthalmology.