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Following the loss of his right eye at Calvi in 1794, Lord Nelson suffered increasing left-sided visual loss, here considered most likely to have been due to the ocular inflammatory condition 'sympathetic ophthalmia'. It is also argued that his succeeding episodes of violent headaches with nausea and prostration, and possible depigmentation of hair, reflected the development of an uveomeningoencephalitic syndrome akin to that of Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada disease, which is best regarded as the same condition with a different aetiology.

Sympathetic ophthalmia was a well-known but greatly feared entity in the 19th and most of the 20th century. This article reviews the Canadian medical literature, tracing the prophylactic and therapeutic modalities offered to treat this blinding affliction.

Louis Braille is called by his first biographer to be the "Johannes Gutenberg for the blind". Being blind himself--caused by a sympathetic ophthalmia after a perforating hurt to his eye--he invented at the age of 16 years a simple and ingenious method enabling blind people to read and write. His system consisting of six elevated and palpable dots was rejected by the teachers of these days, claiming there could be a distance between blind and fullsighted men. Despite this opposition the Braille system succeeded because of its advantages for the blind: Nowadays this method is used all over the world.