Analysis of the Archives' Most Frequently Cited Articles

Abstract

When subscribers to Hermann Knapp's Archives of Ophthalmology (then called the Archives of Ophthalmology & Otology) received volume 1, No. 1, in 1869, they were treated to a remarkable group of articles (Figure). Included in this issue was Henry Willard Williams' description of the use of a suture in closing the cataract wound. Williams was the first to use a suture in intraocular surgery, and his article continues to be cited to this day. Further, there was Hermann Knapp's report on his third series of 100 cases of cataract extraction by the "peripheric-linear method," which served as a benchmark for evaluation of the results of cataract surgery for the next quarter of a century. Knapp also provided, complete with color plate, the third case to be described in the medical literature of an embolism of a retinal artery, an article cited for a century afterward. Richard Liebreich described a modification