Taking five well known 19th century figures as his subjects, distinguished ophthalmologist George M. Gould searches for the origins of ill health in Thomas de Quincey, Thomas Carlyle, Charles Darwin, Thomas Henry Huxley, and Robert Browning. He ultimately discovers eyestrain to be the root of their health problems. This 1903 volume sketches the medical facts of the lives in question, and includes discussions of biliousness, headache, vertigo, the discovery of astigmatism, and the physiology of vision.