THE OPHTHALMOLOGIST, like the physician in other fields of medicine, has frequently a preconceived idea about the treatment of disease based on his personal experience and the experience of others recorded in the medical journals and textbooks. This is particularly true in the case of glaucoma. These fixed ideas become malleable under the influence of statistical research.
It was with the purpose of finding out the results of the present methods of handling glaucoma that we at the Wills Hospital sought to obtain the desired information by a survey, the result of which was published in the Archives.1 This study covered a ten year period, from 1926 to 1935, and included the records of 1,876 patients, representing 0.78 per cent of a total of 242,533 patients admitted to the hospital for various reasons during that decade. Statistics from this survey were widely quoted by Duke-Elder in his section on