It is becoming increasingly difficult to get manuscripts on (ophthalmic) history accepted by medical journals. This, in spite of the fact that studying the history of disorders yields valuable insights, which can offer new approaches to solving problems of pathophysiology or delimiting disease entities. Some authors may not even be aware that a literature search is also a form of historical investigation. Drusen are a case in point. For 160 years drusen have been associated with the aging macula disorder (AMD) −sometimes under a different name-, and are a benchmark for AMD.We still do not know at the present time what role they play in AMD pathogenesis. I was surprised to find out that the association between drusen and AMD was explicitly denied 30 years after their link was first described. Otto Haab coined the name Bsenile Macular Disease^ (MD) [1] and explicitly wrote that drusen, Bquite innocent changes in old persons,^ had nothing to do with this disease [2] (Fig. 1), although three researchers had earlier linked drusen to MD. So why did Haab come to this conclusion? Was it because earlier authors could not agree on where drusen originate from or the effect they had on retinal function? Carl Wedl named drusen as colloid bodies of the choroid and thought they were incompletely developed cells, because they had no cell membrane or nucleus [3]. Frans Donders called them colloid balls surrounded by pigment, noting their preference for the macular area and concluded that drusen originate from retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cell nuclei [4]. Heinrich Muller mentioned deposits on the inner side of the choroid that had a ball-shaped or drusenoid form and coined the word Bdruse.^ [5] He mentioned that drusen originate from focal thickenings in Bruch’s membrane. Later, the theory was formulated that drusen originate from leucocytes [6]. But we still do not know, 160 odd years on, from where exactly drusen originate . The RPE has returned as the latest candidate [7], just as Donders suggested. Who were these early authors who linked drusen with AMD? Donders designed in 1852 an improved ophthalmoscope after Helmholtz’s publication on ophthalmoscopy of the living eye. Donders was convinced that the white flecks that he had seen several times on ophthalmoscopy in eyes of old people suffering from Bsenile amblyopia^ (as loss of visual acuity in the elderly was called at that time) were not fatty metamorphoses but colloid degenerations. Around 1853 Donders started with histological examination of 38 apparently healthy eyes. Drusen rarely were absent in the eyes of persons aged 70 to 80 years. The visual acuity in these eyes had not been carefully recorded before death [4]. Using microscopy Donders noticed rods, obliquely oriented around small drusen as well as degeneration of the choriocapillaris and the RPE. Often rods and cones were absent above drusen, that sometimes compressed the retina, without expanding the retina on the vitreous side. Donders concluded that the Partly presented at the 28thmeeting of the Julius Hirschberg Gesellschaft, Bonn, Germany, October 4 2014, and at the joint Cogan – Hirschberg Society meeting, New York, USA March 28 2015.