IN RESPONDING to the high distinction of being selected to deliver the Fourth Annual John E. Weeks Memorial Lecture, I have chosen a topic which may seem somewhat remote from the field of endeavor of the man whose memory we are honoring tonight. When John E. Weeks was a forward-looking young man, his keen mind turned to bacteriology, the new and exciting field of his day, with the result that his name has become linked with that of the great Koch. And thus his name is best remembered and known to ophthalmologists the world over. Yet those who were more closely associated with him knew that his curiosity was not limited and that he took a broad interest in the advancement of ophthalmology, a specialty so universal that there is hardly a medical or scientific discipline upon which it does not touch. With this thought in mind I shall talk