Abstract: As the saying goes, history is a mirror of the past and a lesson for the present and future. From the ancient time, the level of vision has been vital for competition and adaptation, which allows human being with successive generations. Thus, human has been obsessively curious about the mechanism of vision development for thousands of years. In the human history, ancient people had left numerous records related to vision development, ocular anatomy and physiology. Since the Renaissance, historical records of ophthalmological knowledge had been largely increased. In the modern society, with the general advances in basic medical sciences and clinical medicine, the diagnosis and treatment in the ophthalmology has progressed considerably, building critical milestone for preventing and curing blindness. Overall, the development of ocular anatomy and physiology allows noninvasive intraocular imaging and investigations of pathogenic mechanism. It boosts innovations of intraocular surgery, which has a continuous trend of minimal invasive. Entering to the new century, breakthroughs and technical achievements in the field of biology and optometry would promote diagnostic decisions and treatments of clinical ophthalmology. This paper will analyze the future development directions of ophthalmology from the history of biology that promoting the development of medicine. (Ophthalmol CHN, 2021, 30: 169-172)

Key words: ophthalmology, history, future