\"We older men who remember Sir Jonathan Hutchinson well recall a tallish dark figure that changed very littlefrom middle life to old age; dark eyes that seemed to look past you through his spectacles, black hair and beard lengthening and growing grey with age, a suit of black broadcloth and a top hat that grudgingly gave way to a wide-awake. We see him presiding at our medical meetings and addressing them in precise clearcut sentences, rather solemn, without much sparkle, but full ofmeat, andmade attractive by more than a trace of Yorkshire accent'

https://sti.bmj.com/content/sextrans/66/5/401.full.pdf

Eminent venereologists 4: Jonathan Hutchinson.

https://publishing.rcseng.ac.uk/doi/pdf/10.1308/147363510X12779829074860

Sir Jonathan Hutchinson and sarcoidosis: a brief history

Interpreting the origin of mammals: new approaches to the history of palaeontology

In 1847, at the age of 56 years, an eccentric English mathematics genius by the name of Charles Babbage constructed an ophthalmoscope. Why he should have done so is a mystery as he had no connection with ophthalmology. In 1832, he was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, a chair previously held by Isaac Newton. The range of ideas or proposals produced by this polymath was truly awesome, from the two forms of cow catcher fitted to the front of trains, a 'black box' recorder for monitoring the condition of railway tracks, colour filters for theatre lighting to occulting lights for signalling ships, he even influenced the introduction of flat rate postage known as the Penny Post. He once said 'every moment of my waking hours has always been occupied by some train of inquiry' [ 1 ]. In his History of Ophthalmology Dan Albert points out that Babbage suffered from the affliction of bilateral monocular diplopia [2]. Maybe it was this condition that motivated him to find out more about his condition by means of the ophthalmoscope. Maybe his friendship with the son of Sir John Herschel, the celebrated mathematician and astronomer, moved him to investigate this area of optics. Babbage gives little clue in the 80 printed papers listed in his autobiographic book, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher. I am grateful to Professor Hans Remky for allowing me to photograph the model of Babbage's ophthalmoscope (Figure 1) that he has constructed on the basis of the description given by Thomas Wharton-Jones, one of the foremost ophthalmologists of the day. He wrote: 'It consisted of a bit of plane mirror with the silver scraped off at two or three spots in the middle, fixed within a tube at

Evolution of the British ophthalmoscope.

Thomas Wharton Jones (1808-91), described as a 'genius' by his famous pupil Thomas Henry Huxley, was an Edinburgh medical graduate. At the age of 19 years he was appointed anatomy demonstrator to the infamous Dr Robert Knox so unwittingly becoming caught up in the Burke and Hare scandal. Escaping to Glasgow, and then to Cork and London, Jones eventually became an outstanding physiologist and ophthalmologist. His seminal observations included scholarly treatises on the vasculature in inflammation together with descriptions of the contractile movement of white blood cells, as well as studies on regeneration and repair, astigmatism and retinitis pigmentosa. He was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1840. One of his seminal contributions was his detailed description of 'granular cells' in the blood of a large number of animal species, including man. His illustrations suggest strongly these were eosinophils, predating Paul Erhlich's definitive studies (using aniline dyes) by 33 years. In later life he was found destitute in his London home and 'rescued' by friends and colleagues. William Gladstone was persuaded to give Jones a civil list pension. He lived out the rest of his life in Ventnor on the Isle of Wight.

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Was Thomas Wharton Jones FRS, assistant to the infamous Dr Knox, the first to recognise the blood eosinophil?

https://bjo.bmj.com/content/bjophthalmol/5/4/145.full.pdf

British masters of ophthalmology series: 12.—thomas wharton jones

https://bjo.bmj.com/content/bjophthalmol/9/6/nil2.full.pdf

Rickman J. Godlee

Papers

British masters of ophthalmology series: 12.—thomas wharton jones

British masters of ophthalmology series: 15.—sir jonathan hutchinson, f.r.s., 1828-1913