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Visual Optics and Refraction a Clinical Approach, by David D. Michaels, St. Louis, C.V. Mosby Company, 1975, 518 pp, price $42.50.
Without supporting figures, I here venture the suggestion that optometrists who become ophthalmologists are more likely to write books on optics and refraction than optometrists who do not, or for that matter, than ophthalmologists who first learned why the pupil is black in medical school. The exploration of the reasons would carry us too far astray; suffice it to say that Michaels' Visual Optics and Refraction is only the most recent in what is fast becoming a new tradition in textbooks of medical optics, or more precisely, of visual optics for those aspiring to become physicians and surgeons of the eye. Let it be said immediately that I liked this book a good deal more than many of its predecessors in this tradition. If s not only that its author would appear to have read more widely and extensively outside the immediate matters of concern, but he does a better job than most in staying on top of his subject despite the exacting demands of learning clinical medicine and, later, of a busy clinical practice.
This book is separated into three sections. The first - in seven chapters - treats basic optics of lenses, prisms, and mirrors, of the eye and its refractive abnormalities. Michaels trys, like the others, to keep the mathematics low key and to spice the reading with humor. On a rare occasion (e.g., discussing false torsion ? 286) the latter takes on an antiscientific tone masking Michaels' own confusion. At others it appears a bit contrived. But some of it is very good and most of it diverting enough; expecting consistent first rate humor (perhaps...