Last December (2001), the Journal published a translation of what we believed to be the first description of eye muscle ‘poulies’ by Phillibert Sappey in 1888.1 Sappey was Professor of Anatomy and President of the Académie de Médecine in Paris and in his book, described the ‘orbital aponeurosis and associated smooth muscle fibers’, with a ‘central portion of the orbital aponeurosis’ and ‘orbital aponeurosis expansions’. The muscle sheaths were called first-order expansions, and the ‘tendinous slips with smooth-muscle fibers associated with these slips’ second-order expansions. The latter represented ‘a pulley and a check ligament’. They contained not only fibrous tissue but also smooth muscle fibers. They inserted anteriorly on the orbital wall and, he said, originated from the fibrous muscle sheath and not from eye muscle fibers. Sappey quoted works by Bonnet2 (1841) and Tenon3 (1816) and, with considerable difficulty, we were able to get copies of these books.