Retina

Definition and stakes

Portrait of Ernst Mach Ernst Mach,  Popular scientific lectures

“ The left eye is the reflexion of the right. And the light-feeling retina of the left eye is a reflexion of the light-feeling retina of the right, in all its functions.
The lense of the eye, like a magic lantern, casts images of objects on the retina. And you may picture to yourself the light-feeling retina of the eye, with its countless nerves, as a hand with innumerable fingers, adapted to feeling light. The ends of the visual nerves, like our fingers, are endowed with varying degrees of sensitiveness.
”
Source: Gutenberg

Ira Mayhew,  Popular Education

“ The retina, which is the third and innermost membrane of the eye, is the expansion of the optic nerve, and constitutes the immediate seat of vision. Such is the arrangement of the humors of the eye, and so perfectly are they adapted to the functions they are called upon to perform, that in the healthy state of this organ, the light entering the pupil is so refracted as to paint upon the retina an exact image of the objects from which it proceeds. The optic nerve, whose expansion forms the retina, receives this image and transmits it to the mind. ”
Source: Gutenberg

Portrait of Erasmus Darwin Erasmus Darwin,  Zoonomia, or, the Laws of Organic Life… (1796)

“ The retina is not so easily excited into action by less irritation after having been lately subjected to greater. 1. When any one passes from the bright daylight into a darkened room, the irises of his eyes expand themselves to their utmost extent in a few seconds of time; but it is very long before the optic nerve, after having been stimulated by the greater light of the day, becomes sensible of the less degree of it in the room; and, if the room is not too obscure, the irises will again contract themselves in some degree, as the sensibility of the retina returns. ”
Source: Wikisource

Get perspective with Kwize: daily news enlightened by great literature