Excerpt from Ophthalmic Literature, Vol. 4: July, 1917The ambitious purpose of the Ophthalmic Year Book is to rende most easily accessible to English-reading ophthalmologists all that is important with relation to ophthalmology in the year's literature of the world. This is to be accomplished by bringing together what is of importance and separating from it all that is not. In so far as important matter is not brought into the volume it fails of its purpose. In so far as unimportant matter is introduced it fails equally, since all unnecessary matter renders less accessible the thing for which the book is really valuable. Unnecessary matter must include repetition of what has previously been brought to the attention Of the profession, and particularly what has been noticed in previous volumes of the Year Book.Repetition must be avoided. That this is essential becomes more evident with the appearance of each new volume. The successive annual digests of the literature now aggregate pages, while the lists of titles given in the bibliography occupy 611 pages. In search ing the literature for particular topics the importance of keeping it down to the lowest possible limit becomes clearly apparent.Then the matter included within the Year Book must be arranged with the greatest care and according to some simple rigid system. It should be possible to ascertain what of value has been written on a given topic, or that nothing has been written on it, in the period with out giving time to reading pages that do not refer to it. Unless the matter sought has all been grouped together this will not be possible.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.