Lee Allen's life was always about drawing and painting. He worked as a young man under Grant Wood. But during the Great Depression of the 1930's, he needed a way to survive so he took a job as an artist that was being offered by Dr. C. S. O'Brien in the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Iowa. The unwritten deal between these two men was that Allen would, for the moment, put aside his aspirations in the fine arts and concentrate on becoming the best ophthalmic illustrator in the country. O'Brien asked Lee to attend all the lectures offered to the ophthalmologists in training, to take his work to national meetings, and to publish his findings under his own name in the ophthalmic literature, whether he had the appropriate academic degrees or not. Lee Allen took this contract seriously.

In this book, a biographical sketch of Lee Allen reviews some of his many accomplishments and contributions to ophthalmic practice.

When Lee was 78, he began to recognize the first signs of age-related macular degeneration in his left eye. Naturally he began to sketch them. There never was anyone better equipped by training and long experience to describe the particulars of age-related macular degeneration, from the inside out, than Lee Allen. He has just the right combination of skill, experience and persistence to draw what he sees.

-from the foreword by H. Stanley Thompson, MD

Lee Allen died on May 5, 2005.
He was 95.