782 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF OPHTHALMOLOGY MAY, 1969

admirable ; however, I 'd like to take this op­portunity to add an account of perhaps the first use of a scierai type contact lens. Ac­cording to Cooper, in his text, Wounds and Injuries of the Eye, published in London in 1859, prevention of symblepharon in lime burns of the eye was reported to have been treated by a glass eye mask at Moorfield's Eye Hospital in 1857. The mask, a sort of artificial eye, filling the fornices, had an ap­erture corresponding with the cornea and was manufactured by Gray and Holford, on Goswell Road in London.

To sum up, Dr. Hartstein 's worthwhile book is a broad-in-scope yet concise review of the contact lens field for residents and other initiates in the field.

David Miller

E X A M E N DE L ' A C U I T É V I S U E L L E DES E N ­

FANTS ILLETTRES OU D E F I C I E N T S

M E N T A U X . By Françoise Bauner and Alfred Brauner. Paris, Les Editions So­ciales Françaises, 1968. Paperbound, 12 pages, 22 figures in black and white. The vision of mentally deficient children

is difficult to test because of lack of interest, rapid fatigue, psychomotor instability and poor orientation, to which poor vision often contributes. The E-game and similar tests involving manipulation fail because of the poor sense of orientation, and such children do not cooperate in the recognition of simple diagrams on account of difficulty in verbali­zation. The authors use an ingenious method to surmount these predicaments. A chart containing simple figures of a circle, square, cross, X, hammer, key, bell, scissors, flower, mushroom, duck, bird, dog, donkey, boy, auto, boat, airplane, and graded to measure visual acuity from 20/200 to 20/20 is shown, one figure at a time, by means of an adjustable screen. The child is provided with a few large cardboard models of the various diagrams on an adjacent table, and the assis­tant asks, "You have the same ; where is

i t ?" This novel approach which has been successfully tested on mentally deficient chil­dren should also be of service in the visual examination of children at a younger age than is now possible.

James E. Lebensohn

K L I N I K UND PATHOLOGIE DER N E T Z H A U T -

GEFÄSSE. By Prof. Dr. R. Seitz. Stuttgart, Ferdinand Enke Verlag, 1968. Clothbound, 459 pages, index, 463 figures (32 color figures). This book is based on the author's mono­

graph, which appeared in 1962 in German and 1964 in English. The author, who is now a professor in Karlsruhe, has considerably enlarged the scope of his study. The original work was mainly concerned with general as­pects of pathologic changes in the retinal vessels. The additional material, which dou­bles the volume of the book, is concerned with specific aspects of retinal vessel dis­eases. Here again a close correlation between the ophthalmoscopic picture and the histo­logie substrate is attempted. This is certainly a most fruitful approach and is probably the basis of further, more dynamic studies on the retinal vasculature.

Among the vascular diseases discussed are not only the more common entities such as atherosclerosis, diabetes and hypertension, but also esoteric and unusual conditions, namely, macroglobulinema, circinate retinop-athy and quinine poisoning. The illustrations are highly instructive and the bibliography is very valuable.

F . C. Blodi

L I G H T , COLOUR AND V I S I O N . Second edition. By Yves Le Grand. Trans , by R. W. G. Hunt , J . W . T. H u n t and F . R. W . Hunt . London, Chapman & Hall, 1968. Cloth-bound, 564 pages, index, 45 tables, 125 figures in black and white. $11.25. The reaction of the retina "when its light