Warren Tay

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Warren Tay (1843- May 15, 1927) was a British ophthalmologist who first described the red spot on the retina of the eye in 1881, present in the Tay-Sachs disease. He first reported studies of this condition in the Volume I edition of the Ophthalmological Society, an organization in which he was a founding member. Here he described the symptoms in a child who also had neurological problems. Later in the Volume IV edition, he gave a complete description of the clinical symptoms of the disorder, and also reported that another member from the same family had this retinal condition.

In 1874 at the London Ophthalmic Hospital, Tay was the first to describe a condition that consists of small white or yellow dots in the choroid around the macula in the eye, which are the manifestation of senile macular degeneration. However, this condition is sometimes referred to as Hutchinson's disease, named after surgeon Jonathan Hutchinson.

Tay himself had glaucoma and was blind in one eye. He was a keen cyclist, and he was described by his friends as "a walking encyclopaedia of medicine".[1]