Books and Publications

This book treats the early development, diffusion, commerce, and artistic representation of eyeglasses from their invention ca. 1286 to the discovery of the telescope ca. 1600. It is based primarily on a great number of recently discovered documents in European depositories and on artifacts unearthed at archeological sites. Although it is focused on Italy, the home of the first spectacles and of most of the available evidence, it also examines new documentary and archeological discoveries in the rest of Europe.

It is a very precious art book where glasses are enhanced through works of art created by the great masters: from Crivelli to Ghirlandaio, from Bruegel to Bosh, from Caravaggio to Goya, from Carpaccio to Luca Giordano up to the very well known painters of the 19th century like Giovanni Fattori, Francesco Haiez, Pablo Picasso, and Renato Guttuso, just to mention some. Very interesting also are the chapters where the symbolic aspects of a visual aid shaped like a pitchfork on the nose has been depicted very carefully not only by very famous people from the past, but also by Saints, Prophets, Jesus and even Satan. Great importance has been given to works of arts in Sicily especially, many belonging to private collections

ISBN# 88-8243-150-9. Only 500 copies printed, available only from Typography Lussografica, Caltanisetta (Italy) www.lussografica.it.

Spectacles and Sunglasses provides a comprehensive account of the design of spectacles in their many guises along with the historical developments that influenced them. A detailed history of spectacles is presented through a brief synopsis and more than 500 color photos. The book devotes considerable attention to 20th century designs: a period that witnessed the creation of innumerable outlandish and extravagant spectacles. Jackie Kennedy's and Audrey Hepburn's sunglasses; the frames worn by Buddy Holly, Nana Mouskouri and Yves Saint Laurent; and the famous models by Pierre Cardin, Courrèges, Ray-Ban and Christian Dior may all be found in this book. A wide range of contemporary innovative designs is also represented.

This volume surveys the historical relations of science and technology by privileging the interaction between the history of glass and the scientific culture of classical Antiquity and the Middle Age. Within this perspective the case of glass has offered an extremely useful example, showing how the development of theories which have often been regarded as the exclusive result of intellectual activities were in fact the result of the progress of glassmaking techniques obtained by artisans.

Benito Daza de Valdes, a Dominican friar and an officer of the Spanish Inquisition during the tumultuous 17th century, possessed an uncanny knowledge of the mechanics of vision. He set down much of this knowledge in a small but signal volume titled Uso de Los Anteojos – the Use of Eyeglasses. It is considered to be one of the Holy Grails of Ophthalmology. Valdes was the first person to describe the use of several different objects including various sizes of type to test visual acuity. His book is very important because it laid the groundwork for all that has followed in this area. Valdes’ “little book” contains the first published description of the art of prescribing glasses. It also documents one of the earliest uses of various objects (such as mustard seeds and different sizes of print) to assess visual acuity. His description of refractive errors and his method for assessing vision remain valid to this day. Many of the ideas that Valdes held in the 17th century are strikingly similar to our current-day beliefs. That this is so is all the more remarkable when we consider that as far as we know Valdes had no formal training in either optics or mathematics. Yet he and his colleagues would have personally been developing presbyopia. Therefore, he would have been confronted with the problem of obtaining reading glasses for himself and providing reading glasses for his colleagues and others. Valdes brought his analytical and practical intellect to bear on this problem. His logical and thorough approach is well documented in his book.

The first of its three parts deals with the nature and properties of the eye and its refractive conditions. The second discusses contemporary spectacle lenses and frames in technological and utilitarian detail. The third and major part in the style of Platonian dialogue describes a variety of clinical optometric problems and their practical solutions. The procedural similarities to today's mode of optometric analysis is remarkably evident.

Before the real contact lenses as we know them, there has been a lot of quite interesting devices leading to it. The contact lenses were not invented; they are the consequence of earlier developments of other ophthalmic devices used for other purposes.

The speculations and the hypotheses of the 16th and 17th centuries (Leonardo da Vinci, Descartes, Huygens, La Hire) are in keeping with the challenge to the ancient theories of vision with the premises of a rational explanation of the phenomena of reflective and refractive optics relative to the human eye. Even if one could recognize neutralization of, or contact with, the cornea in certain texts and figures of this epoch, such would only represent the fruit of speculations, hypotheses or erroneous extrapolations. Any argument proves that their authors would have been conscious of these aspects or have envisaged their usefulness for carrying out further studies, much less for correction of refractive errors.

In the course of the 18th Century and the first half of the 19th, the works and publications of The Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris (La Hire, Méry, Pourfour du Petit), and those of The Royal Society of London (Young) allowed scientific circles to take cognizance of the fact that neutralization of the corneal dioptric power was achievable even in the living eye of a human. It therefore constituted a valuable procedure for the investigation of the ocular media and could serve, with some reservations for experiments in physiological optics.

Practical applications of these discoveries survived with Czermak’s orthoscope and adaptations from this from the second half of the 19th Century. Hasner, Arlt, Coccius and Helmholtz used them for the examination of the anterior segment of the eye and even the fundus oculi.

The story of Asian ophthalmology has not been readily available to us in the English language. This book is filled with well-researched details presented in a fascinating narrative. Glimpses of the evolving Japanese social setting are noted at the beginning of each chapter. The progress of Japanese medicine is thoughtfully painted for you in beautiful strokes. One fascinating illustrated chapter is devoted to the history of spectacles. This book is an important medical and literary landmark for it provides a much- needed bridge from East to West that will provide a conduit for ideas in both directions.

Eyeglasses have always been an insightful marriage of popular fashion and scientific investigation. In recent years eyeglasses have been appreciated as fashion accessories ad given historical reference as period treasures. This book is complete with over 400 full-color illustrations detailing the wide range of factors influencing the shape and function of spectacles throughout the centuries. Collectible Eyeglasses analyzes the development of a wide variety of vision aids, from opera glasses to sports goggles, tracing their development from antiquity to the present day.