Otto Schirmer

Otto Schirmer was a German ophthalmologist, born in Greifswald in December 1864 and dead in May 1918. He took the chair of ophthalmology at Greifswald that his father Rudolf Schirmer had held before him, later served as professor at Kiel and Strasbourg, and in 1909 emigrated to New York, where he worked at several institutions including the Herman Knapp Memorial Eye Hospital. His research covered the histology and biochemistry of cataract, the pathology of sympathetic ophthalmia, rosacea keratitis, and the physiology and microanatomy of the lacrimal apparatus, and his writing on sympathetic ophthalmia and the tear system appeared in the second edition of the Graefe-Saemisch handbook of ophthalmology. He is remembered above all for the Schirmer test, which measures tear secretion with absorbent paper.