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Bradley R. Straatsma and Donald Minckler

Arch Ophthalmol. 2003;121:566-567.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

EDWARD JACKSON, MD, the great ophthalmic editor and leader of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, observed, "Underlying all literature is the belief that the ideas it perpetuates are worthy of preservation or dissemination."¹(pp8911-8912) In his comprehensive article on the history of ophthalmic literature, he noted that for the first 200 years after the advent of printing, medical information was disseminated through pamphlets. Each pamphlet was an independent publication devoted to 1 subject and published by an individual author: "Only after two hundred years of printing was the successive issue, at more or less regular intervals, of pamphlets similar in size and form, but devoted to different matters—the journal form of literature—established."¹(pp8911-8912)

Publication of the first ophthalmology journals sputtered and floundered in Europe and the United States, but by the mid-19th century, ophthalmology journals as we know them today were becoming established. Archives of Ophthalmology was started . . . [Full Text of this Article]