Frank B. Walsh

Frank Burton Walsh (October 18, 1895, Oxbow, Saskatchewan – November 27, 1978, Baltimore, Maryland) was a Canadian-American ophthalmologist known for his work in neuro-ophthalmology.

[1][2] For most of his career, Walsh worked as a neuro-ophthalmologist at the Wilmer Eye Institute of Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Walsh first entered the field of neuro-ophthalmology after approaching neuroscientist Dr. Frank Ford about performing joint research relating ophthalmology to the central nervous system during his last year of residency.

Walsh's role in the research project included visiting many of Ford's patients and giving full ophthalmologic exams.

[3] Following his residency, Walsh became a full-time staff member at the Wilmer Eye Institute of Johns Hopkins Hospital.

[4] Walsh left the Wilmer Eye Institute in 1945 to go into private practice in Baltimore, Maryland because of financial reasons.

The book contained years of Walsh's observations, analysis, and cataloguing of diseases that affect the eye through the nervous system.

[6] He used many techniques, such as Retinoscopy, Static and Kinetic Golmann Perimetry, Fluorescein angiography, and ocular ultrasonography, to diagnose the syndrome.

In another one of his most cited articles, Walsh discussed whether oral contraceptives affected or complicated the parts of a patient's brain related to the eyes.

A team at Johns Hopkins diagnosed Walsh with oat cell carcinoma, which filled half of his lungs.

[4] In 1958, Frank Walsh and Richard Lindenberg started collaborating with the goal of forming a society where neuro-ophthalmologists could meet and discuss new ideas and facts.

The first three meetings, which they named the Neuro-Ophthalmic Pathology Symposium, included case presentations, clinical conferences, and discussion with local and visiting experts.

Some meetings were even described as "raucous," with presentations being full of puns and clinical events so bizarre that the audience had no choice but to laugh.

Some believed that the movement to make the society more formal and organized turned a purely academic environment into one diluted by political and economic issues.

[3] In 2000, Frank B. Walsh was inducted into the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery Ophthalmology Hall of Fame.