Peeling an Eye

Many a medical book would make a layman turn green around the gills. One such book, The Human Eye (Bausch & Lomb Press; $6.50), had last week sold 10,000 copies. Its gill-greening quality --and the great value of the book for eye doctors -- lies in its superimposed illustrations: turning the pages is like peeling off slices of the eye and parts of its socket, layer upon layer, until all that remains is bare bone. The book consists of five-color transparencies printed on heavy Cellophane and laid on one another in perfect register. On the top Cellophane page appears a serene brown eye, surrounded by part of a nose, cheek and forehead. Turning the page pulls the skin off. Its under side shows on the back of the page, the skinless eye appears on the page following -- and so on.

This is the first time such a method has been used for an anatomical textbook. The artist is Gladys McHugh, who trained under Max Broedel of Johns Hopkins (TIME, March 14, 1938). To make sketches for the "stereoscopic paintings" she studied cadavers and anatomy books, watched operations, practiced dissection on pigs' eyes, finally dissected 20 human eyes herself. She is now working up a series on ears for Army flight surgeons. The Human Eye's text is by Ophthalmologist Peter Kronfeld, with a historical appendix by Anatomist Stephen Polyak, both of Chicago.

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