On the Anomalies of Accommodation and Refraction

Frans Cornelis Donders, a prominent 19th-century ophthalmologist, revolutionized the scientific approach to correcting vision impairments. His seminal work, On the Anomalies of Accommodation and Refraction (1864), laid the groundwork for understanding and treating refractive errors such as nearsightedness (myopia), farsightedness (hyperopia), and astigmatism.1

Donders discovered that hyperopia results from an eyeball that is too short, causing light rays to converge behind the retina. He also identified that astigmatism stems from uneven corneal and lens surfaces, which scatter light instead of focusing it. These findings established the field of scientific clinical refraction. Accommodation, the eye's ability to adjust focus, involves changes in the lens's curvature, a process that can diminish with age, leading to presbyopia.123