The visual fields: an interdisciplinary history I. The evolution of knowledge.

A subjective study of a hemianopic field defect was reported to the London Royal Society in 1824. The German ophthalmologist Albrecht von Graefe devised a means of mapping field defects, which evolved into quantitative perimetry as an exact method of localizing lesions in the visual pathways. Knowledge of these pathways increased during the nineteenth century; final identification of the visual cortex in the occipital lobe was achieved by Japanese and British ophthalmologists and neurologists on the basis of wartime studies of field defects due to cerebral missile wounds.