IT is evident from current ophthalmic literature that there is still an unawareness of the possibility and the value of radiotherapy for some patients with malignant melanoma of the choroid, despite the publication of several papers and lectures about this matter. So this paper is submitted as a reasonable excuse for publishing the results of the first hundred patients with malignant melanoma of the choroid treated by radioactive applicators between 1939 and 1964 (99 by 60Co applicators and one by radon seeds in 1939). The presence of malignant melanoma of the choroid, whether in an only eye or when the other eye is blind or almost so from either disease or amblyopia and in rare cases when this tumour is bilateral, would naturally incite even the most orthodox-minded surgeon to seek an alternative treatment to the tragic consequence of excision. It is fortunate that freedom of thought in medicine still allows us to challenge accepted and time-honoured therapeutic procedures and beliefs. Among these has been the authoritative statement that malignant melanomata are radioresistant for irradiation. This depressing attitude is untrue, for a number of malignant melanomata of the choroid are in fact radiosensitive and become reduced to a flat, pigment-stippled scar (Fig. 1). The effective application of radiotherapeutic 15.12.60 3.10.61 FIG. 1.-Malignant melanoma before and after radiotherapy, showing flat, pigment-stippled scar.

SUMMARY In the course of an investigation of karyotypes in patients with retinoblastoma, one was found in whom all cells showed a deletion in the longer arm of one of the large acrocentric chromosomes. Five other patients had normal karyotypes. The writers wish to thank Dr White Franklin for drawing attention to case no. 1 and arranging for the biopsy, Dr Joy D. A. Delhanty for the fibroblast culture in case no. 1, Dr R. G. Chitham for the culture in case no. 6, Dr Sylvia D. Lawler for suggestions and Miss Dorothy Newlyn for family history investigations. The work was carried out with the aid of a grant RG‐6984 from the United States Public Health Service.

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SURGICAL exploration of part of the ciliary body is justifiable when gonioscopic examination shows an extension of a malignant melanoma of the iris posteriorly into the filtration angle and probably into the ciliary body, and also in the case of a malignant melanoma arising in the ciliary body either in an only eye, or when the other eye has grossly defective vision through disease or amblyopia. Indeed the procedure seems reasonable whenever the affected eye still has good vision. Exposure of the ciliary body may be effected by reflecting either a threesided scleral flap with a hinge posteriorly (Fig. 1) or two scleral flaps which open like panels (Fig. 2).