The Hole in My Vision [Paperback]

Lee Allen (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1572160845 | ISBN-13: 978-1572160842 | Publication Date: May 1, 2000 | Edition: 1st

Ninety-year-old artist Lee Allen, whose retina was beginning to suffer from age-related macular degeneration, realized that he could see the defects in his vision. For a decade he studied these defects and carefully drew pictures of the holes in his vision, showing the way they changed with time and with laser surgery. Macular degeneration is the most common cause of blindness among older people in the industrialized world.

This important book, set in type most visually impaired people can read, includes information about macular degeneration and comments from Lee's doctor and colleagues.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Lee Allen was an art student at the University of Iowa when artist Grant Wood offered him a job. By the time Lee had completed his studies with Grant Wood in the 1930s, he was an accomplished artist and draftsman. He later applied these skills to medical illustration. He became an accomplished ophthalmic medical illustrator and photographer.

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Penfield Pr; 1st edition (May 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1572160845
• ISBN-13: 978-1572160842
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,467,034 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Macular Degeneration: Perceptions and Drawings of an Artist, September 2, 2000

By 

Thomas A. Weingeist (Iowa City, Iowa USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Hole in My Vision (Paperback)

This is a unique book illustrated and written by an accompished medical illustrator, Lee Allen, and two EyeMDs, ophthalmologists H. Stanley Thompson, MD and James C. Folk, MD. Anyone faced with losing vision from macular degeneration the most common cause of blindness in individuals over the age of 50 will benefit from reading this book.

Lee Allen at 87 Lee Allen's life was always about drawing and painting. He worked as a young man under Grant Wood. But during the Great Depression of the 1930's, he needed a way to survive so he took a job as an artist that was being offered by Dr. C. S. O'Brien in the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Iowa. The unwritten deal between these two men was that Allen would, for the moment, put aside his aspirations in the fine arts and concentrate on becoming the best ophthalmic illustrator in the country. O'Brien asked Lee to attend all the lectures offered to the ophthalmologists in training, to take his work to national meetings, and to publish his findings under his own name in the ophthalmic literature, whether he had the appropriate academic degrees or not. Lee Allen took this contract seriously.

In this book, a biographical sketch of Lee Allen reviews some of his many accomplishments and contributions to ophthalmic practice.

When Lee was 78, he began to recognize the first signs of age-related macular degeneration in his left eye. Naturally he began to sketch them. There never was anyone better equipped by training and long experience to describe the particulars of age-related macular degeneration, from the inside out, than Lee Allen. He has just the right combination of skill, experience and persistence to draw what he sees.

If you learned from Henry Grunwald's book: Twilight:Losing Sight and Gaining Insight you will find this "atlas" and biographical sketch of Lee Allen's very informative.