Volume 9 | Issue 6 | September 29, 2015
More than a century of history
Eye Center Display Offers a Look
back at Ophthalmology’s Past
By Tyler Smith
Back in the day, you might have been discussing your upcoming
cataract surgery with your ophthalmologist when you noted
the razor blade breaker. Nothing to worry about, he would have
assured you. It’s just to snap off a shard to use in cutting into
your cornea.
The glass case just off the main entrance to the recently
expanded and remodeled Eye Center contains a wide variety of
ophthalmology-related instruments Hovland has collected across
the years from retiring colleagues.
“I had a wide referral practice so I knew most of the
ophthalmologists in the state and the region,” he says. Along
the way, he also picked items from libraries, estate sales, and
businesses. A collection standout is a group of painstakingly
designed, fitted, and painted prosthetic eyes produced by Walter
Johnson, an ocularist with the Denver Optic Company, which was
founded in 1906.
Kenneth Hovland, MD, a semi-retired retinal specialist and longtime
volunteer faculty member at the University of Colorado School of Medicine,
with a display of objects detailing the history of ophthalmology. The display
is in the Eye Center at University of Colorado Hospital.
Seeing you blanch, he might have picked up a slender, sharp-edged
instrument and inquired: Perhaps you’d prefer a von Graefe knife?
These were not items displayed in a chamber of horrors, but vital
medical instruments of their era. Now they’re on display in a quiet
hallway in the Eye Center at University of Colorado Hospital.
They are part of an “Ophthalmic Historical Collection,” curated
by Kenneth Hovland, MD, a semi-retired retinal specialist who
completed his surgical internship and residency at the University of
Colorado School of Medicine in the 1960s. Hovland spent his career
in private practice, but was a longtime volunteer faculty member at
CU and still leads the occasional class and grand rounds.
The von Graefe knife (left) and the razor blade breaker were used to make
initial corneal incisions.
The collection has several other Colorado connections, including
photos of Philip Ellis, MD, who was the first full-time head of
ophthalmology at CU and served as chair of the department for
35 years (1960-1995), and Gertrude Hausmann, MD, Colorado’s
first female ophthalmologist. She practiced for more than half a
century (1938-1992). In addition, ophthalmologist Joel Goldstein,
MD, donated items from Leonard Swigert, MD, an ophthalmology
Continued
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Volume 9 | Issue 6 | September 29, 2015 | Page 2
resident at CU from 1930 to 1932 and father of Apollo 13 astronaut
Jack Swigert.
Where we’ve been. The double-sided case offers a look at the
road ophthalmology followed to reach its high-tech present. On
one shelf is a Schiotz tonometer, invented in Norway in 1905,
used to measure pressure in the eye. Nearby sit pinhole glasses
patients wore for a week or two to limit eye movement after retinal
detachment surgery. Another shelf holds multi-mirror lenses that
helped physicians determine the eye’s ability to move and rotate.
He rattles off only a partial list of the major advancements
he’s seen during his career, including laser surgery, optical
coherence tomography, drugs to treat macular degeneration, rapid
improvements in lens implants, ultrasound, and more.
Visions of the future. But the display looks back to look forward.
For example, a picture of a Plexiglas canopy from a World War II
British Spitfire plane with bullet holes would seem to have little to
do with ophthalmology. But in fact, the bullet-riddled piece played
a pivotal role in the development of intraocular lenses to treat
cataracts, Hovland explains.
Harold Ridley, a London-based ophthalmologist, saw that
fragments of Plexiglas embedded in the eyes of Royal Air Force
pilots did not trigger rejection. From that observation, he reasoned
that he could implant plastic artificial lenses in the eyes to correct
cataracts. He was correct, but the medical community was slow
to accept his finding, and it wasn’t until 1981 that the Food and
Drug Administration approved the intraocular lens for use in the
United States.
The tools for the trade for cataract surgery.
Note the razor blade in the background.
The pieces date as far back as the mid-nineteenth century, but others
recall Hovland’s early training. A picture from 1966, for example,
illustrates erisophake, a cataract surgery procedure that used suction
to help the surgeon grasp and extract the clouded lens.
Carefully detailed and fitted prosthetic eyes
from the Denver Optical Company.
Illustration (left) shows early use of the ophthalmoscope, an instrument for
looking into the eye. At right, Hovland demonstrates.
“I want people to see some of the things that I used and stop
and say, ‘Whoa, what is that?’” Hovland says. “It gives them
perspective.”
World War II influenced the development of ophthalmology,
particularly the retinal specialty, in other ways, too, Hovland adds.
The display notes the life of Charles Schepens, a Belgian-born
ophthalmologist who trained in London, served as a medical officer
in the Belgian Air Force, and escaped to France after the Nazis
invaded and occupied his home country.
During the war, Schepens fought on the side of the French
Resistance – operating under an alias in a lumber mill, as Hovland
relates it – escaped the Gestapo, and settled in England to resume
Continued
Volume 9 | Issue 6 | September 29, 2015 | Page 3
his medical career after the war ended. He immigrated to the
United States in 1947 and two years later founded the first-ever
retina service at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, which
is affiliated with the Harvard Medical School. He was there during
Hovland’s fellowship in 1968.
Hovland says he had approval to create the exhibit from current
Ophthalmology Chair Naresh Mandava, MD, before the expansion.
“Now we have the location and space for it,” he says. He sees it as
a point of interest for residents taking breaks from presentations
in the nearby auditorium. He mused about what artifacts modern
ophthalmology may one day yield.
“In 50 years,” Hovland says, “what will those guys say they knew
about ophthalmology?”
Lenses from the 1890s sold by itinerant peddlers.
Schepens went on to a long and influential career that included
developing the binocular indirect ophthalmoscope, a device
for looking at the retina and vitreous; the scleral buckle, which
ophthalmologists use to keep the eye in place during surgery; and
techniques to close retinal tears.
Hovland’s display is just west of the main hallway entering the Eye Center.
Hovland’s collection also includes contributions from those less
learned but possessed with a practical eye and business sense. A
trial lens set, circa 1890, was among the goods toted by itinerant
peddlers, Hovland says. Frequent customers were women who
did a lot of sewing and knitting. “He’d ask them to put their
hands where they did their knitting, and used a string to measure
the distance from their eyes,” Hovland relates. The peddler then
selected a lens to match their needs.