Diagnostic significance of failing vision

In this paper my real purpose is not to be instructive medically, in the sense of trying to convey the ophthalmologic pictures of numerous ocular diseases. I do hope, by outlining some of the close interrelations of general medicine and ophthalmology in one subdivision of the latter specialty, to combat in a small way the tendency toward the isolation of ophthalmologic from general medical practice. I believe that both ophthalmologists and optometrists have useful and legitimate places in eye care, but I am strongly opposed to the efforts of many optometrists to become the ophthalmic consultants for the medical profession and to eliminate the ophthalmologist from the picture of ocular care except for surgical and local treatment of eye disease. This can result only in general practitioners', in all but the great population centers, having to take over the surgical and other treatment of the eye, a course that will