Named Eye Chief
DR. WALTER B. LANCASTER of Boston, one of the country's foremost ophthalmic surgeons, has been appointed Chief of Staff of the Dartmouth Eye Institute, effective November 1. Announcement of this important addition to the Institute's research and clinical staff was made by President Hopkins late in September.
Regarded as the dean of American ophthalmology,
Dr. Lancaster has practiced his specialty in Boston since 1897. In order to devote himself fully to his new duties at Dartmouth he will relinquish his practice as consulting ophthalmic surgeon in Boston, as well as his positions as Associate in Ophthalmology at the Harvard University Medical School and Consulting Ophthalmic Surgeon at the New England Hospital for Women and Children.
Dr. Lancaster's joining the Eye Institute as Chief of Staff gives an official nature to his long association with Dartmouth's growing eye center. It was he who, through his special interest in the field of physiological optics, was instrumental in founding at Dartmouth the Department of Research in Physiological Optics from which the present Eye Institute has developed. It was also Dr. Lancaster who gave the name aniseikonia to the disease of unequal images for which the Dartmouth Eye Institute has discovered new methods of diagnosis and treatment. An additional tie with Dartmouth is provided through Dr. Lancaster's wife, the former Emma Winter of Newton, Mass., who is a descendant of Eleazar Wheelock. The new Chief of Staff was honored by the College in 1939 when the Doctorate of Science was conferred upon him at the Commencement exercises.
HARVARD GRADUATE
Dr. Lancaster was graduated from Harvard University in 1884 and from the Harvard Medical School in 1889. He was ophthalmic surgeon successively at the Boston City Hospital and the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary for three decades, and since 1928 has continued his work in a consulting capacity. He was formerly instructor in ophthalmology at the Harvard Medical School and has held his present associateship there since 1933.
Dr. Lancaster is past president of the American Ophthalmological Society, the American Board of Ophthalmology, the American Academy of Ophthalmology and Oto-Laryngology, and the New England Ophthalmological Society. As chairman of the ophthalmological section of the National Conference on Nomenclature of Disease he devised the standard naming of eye diseases. During the World War he was head of the department of ophthalmology at the aeronautical research laboratories at Mitchell Field, N. Y., thereby gaining a background of experience which is expected to be of great value in the research program which the Dartmouth Eye Institute is now conducting at the Pensacola naval air base for several branches of the United/States air service.
Dr. Lancaster has published a young library of learned papers in the field of physiological optics. He is a member of the executive committee of the Advisory Board of Medical Specialties, a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, and a member of the American Medical Association, the Optical Society of America, the National Research Council, and the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, as well as of the four societies of which he is past president.
WHEN 590 (ALL EXCEPT A FEW WERE UNDERGRADUATES) REGISTERED IN THAYER HALL, OCTOBER 16. LEFT, PROF. HENRY MCC. DARGAN, SPECIAL SELECTIVE SERVICE REGISTRAR FOR THE COLLEGE, EXPLAINS BLANKS TO FRANCIS M. HATCH '43 OF RUTLAND, VT.; AND RIGHT, TWO STUDENTS, RICHARD H. KIMBER '43 OF GERMANTOWN, PA., AND MARSTON B. GIBBS '41 OF BRONXVILLE, N. Y„ ARE REGISTERED BY PROF. GEORGE L. FROST, ASSISTED BY MISS EVONNE COBURN, TYPIST, WHO IS ASSISTANT ON THE DARTMOUTH ALUMNI FUND.
