An introduction to clinical perimetry

Historical Significance: Harry Moss Traquair (1875-1954) was Scottish and is regarded as the father of clinical perimetry. His name is attached to some visual field concepts such as Traquair's hill of vision, Traquair's perimetric targets and Traquair's scotoma. This is the first edition of his classic text on perimetry. There were 5 later editions, some re-issued by US publishers. This was the last ediiton published under Traquair's sole authorship. The last edition was published posthumously in 1957, when it was titled 'Traquair's Clinical Perimetry' and co-authored by G I Scott. Traquair was born in Edinburgh in 1875, and educated at the Edinburgh Academy and the Universities of Halle and Edinburgh. He developed tuberculosis while at Edinburgh University and for that reason went to the Orange Free State, where he remained until the age of twenty-one. The disease recurred during his later years and was eventually the cause of his death. He graduated in medicine 1901 with first-class Honors, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1904. He was appointed ophthalmic surgeon to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh in 1927 and Lecturer in Diseases of the Eye at the University of Edinburgh in the same year. He was President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh from 1939 to 1941, President of the UK Ophthalmological Society from 1943 to 1944, and a Member of the Council of the Faculty of Ophthalmologists. After retirement from practice he was elected the first Honorary Member of the Faculty. He contributed widely to the literature of ophthalmology, and was awarded the Middlemore Prize in 1920, the Doyne Memorial Medal in 1922, and the Mackenzie Memorial Medal in 1939.