Traquair, Harry Moss

SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology

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b. 13 September 1875 Edinburgh, Scotland

d. 14 November 1954 Edinburgh, Scotland

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Scottish ophthalmologist, originator of techniques for the assessment of the visual fields and their neurological significance.

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Traquair graduated in medicine at Edinburgh in 1901. After a period in Germany and South Africa occasioned by tuberculosis, a recurrence of which led to his death, he specialized in ophthalmology and filled a succession of appointments at the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh, until his retirement in 1943 from his post as Senior Ophthalmic Surgeon.

Apart from a wide involvement in the full range of the speciality, he was particularly concerned, in association with neurologists and neurosurgeons, with the assessment and diagnosis of affections of the intracranial visual path-ways. He refined the previously haphazard methods of field charting into perimetry, an exact and repeatable diagnostic routine. His work constituted an essential element in the development of modern surgical neurology.

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Principal Honours and Distinctions

President, Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh 1939–41. Middlemore Prize 1920. Nettleship Medal 1922. Doyne Medal 1923. Mackenzie Medal 1939.

Bibliography

1949, Clinical Perimetry (6th edn).

Further Reading

S.Duke-Elder, 1969, System of Ophthalmology, Vol. 12, London.

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