Election to the chairmanship of this section carries, among other duties, the preparation of an "address." This is a sobering responsibility, entailing as it does a consideration of the activities, interests, responsibilities, and aspirations of ophthalmologists as a group in contradistinction to the more immediate and personal problems with which we are customarily involved in our daily work. Caught in the swirl of an active practice, struggling to conform to a crowded schedule, ophthalmologists find little time for the contemplation of the nature and direction of the wider sweep of developments in medical practice and our relationship to the forces which are changing the course and character of our specialization. In preparing this address I have chosen to examine these forces: developments from within resulting from our expanding knowledge of the eye and its diseases, and pressures from without associated with socioeconomic trends; and to consider how ophthalmologists, it seems