Richardson Cross lecture 1989 amblyopiaߞAn historical perspective

Abstract

I am most honoured to have been asked to deliver the Richardson Cross lecture at this Symposium to celebrate the centenary of the first house surgeon at Bristol Eye Hospital.After medical training at King’s College Hospital Francis Richardson Cross enjoyed travel and study abroad in Europe before becoming a lecturer in anatomy at the Bristol medical school in 1878 and assistant surgeon to the Bristol Royal Infirmary. He was appointed surgeon to the BRI in 1879, and surgeon to the Bristol Eye Hospital in 1882. His first house surgeon was Hermann Snellen, son of his former teacher, Professor Snellen, at Utrecht who is remembered in Snellen’s acuity test charts. A less well known fact was his period as resident medical officer at St. Pancras Infirmary where I served my own pre-registration year when that hospital had been taken over by University College Hospital. He also worked as clinical assistant at the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital which later became Moorfields Eye Hospital, City Road branch. Our third hospital of common endeavour was, of course, Bristol Eye Hospital, the 1935 building for which he was largely responsible, and where I did my first ever training in ophthalmology from 1961—3. However, it may be that there the similarities end because it states in one of his obituaries that —he was a fine speaker and was everywhere an influence for good’. © 1990, College of Ophthalmologists. All right reserved.