Accommodation (eye)

“ The accommodation, however, has to be made for the plane of the pictures itself, and a near accommodation with a far-off convergence is something which the ordinary use of our eyes never teaches us to effect. ”

“ In those ancient days of Western civilization, it was the habit not only to put several beds in one room, but often to devote one bed to the accommodation of two men, but by being content with a very small apartment, I had succeeded in getting a room all to myself. ”

“ Things are improved, too, in the way of light and air; both the public and private rooms of our hotels are far more cheerful and better appointed than they used to be, and instead of the four-posters there are French beds. The one great advantage that our new system possesses over the old is, indeed, the sleeping accommodation. ”

“ Such a room we consider indispensable to the proper accommodation of a house in the country, as saving a world of up-and-down-stairs' labor to her who is usually charged with the domestic cares and supervision of the family. ”

“ The rooms of the poorer class have neither wooden walls nor floors, and are just large enough to admit of the inhabitants sleeping, and perhaps turning round in them. The whole interior accommodation is comprised in bedsteads with very little covering, a small table, and a few drawers. Beds and chests of drawers answer the purpose of benches and chairs. ”

“ Anomalies of Refraction and Accommodation. Condition of refraction. Emmetropia. Far point. Near point. Limits of range of accommodation. Relative range of accommodation. Mechanism of accommodation. Optical determination of range of accommodation. Senile changes in eye. Presbyopia. Correction by convex lenses. Acuteness of vision 11—30
Myopia. ”

“ The answer to these may be, that the room appropriated for the nursery, or bedroom, may be used for other purposes, equally as well; that when a mode of accommodation is already as convenient as may be, it is poorly worth while to make it less convenient, merely for the sake of variety; and, that utility and convenience are the main objects to be attained in any well-ordered dwelling. ”

“ It being thus established that the same apertures can never effectually serve for light and ventilation, I propose with regard to reading-rooms, lecture-rooms, and school-rooms, which require accommodation for books, maps, charts, and drawings, rather than a view of external objects, that the windows should be placed in the upper part of the room—that the admission of fresh air should be provided for by ducts near the floor—and the escape of the vitiated air by openings in, or on a level with, the ceiling.
The number of windows, and their size, must depend on the size of the room. ”

“ The bolting of blinds and doors, combined with the high, substantial brick and mortar walls which surround us, savors very much of captivity—all the oxygen we have at night passing through a small square made in the apertures of the blinds. The canvas-framed stretchers, designed for reclining, and the accommodation of only one person, are canopied over with beautifully-wrought lace, looking both clean, cool, and inviting, to our weary frames. The atmosphere at this place is said to be conducive of sleep. Every thing sleeps, no difference when or where. ”

“ The powerful electric light employed for the latter purpose is evidently more adequate than the candle used by Purkinje for the study of the celebrated images to which his name has been given, and it suffices to compare—with an open mind-two photographs of images upon the lens, obtained with the eye focused, respectively, at the distance and the near-point, to become convinced that accommodation is accomplished by the lengthening of the eyeball—through the unmistakable action of the oblique muscles—and that we have here one of the most beautiful and significant achievements of the century. ”

“ Since the room is designed primarily for sleeping, care should be taken that the bed be placed in such a position that the light falls from behind the sleeper's head. The dresser should be so placed that the light falls on the face of the occupant of the room when he is looking into the mirror. ”

“ But a great many dwellings there consist of only one room, and in many of the lodging-houses I have seen five or six beds in one small room, in which it has been acknowledged that from 12 to 14 persons have passed the night, and the air has been so bad that I have been compelled to stand at the window whilst visiting the patient. ”

“ Beds are scarcely known: for most the bare floor or the mountain side is sufficient sleeping accommodation. The better class of houses, however—the residences of those whom wealth and luxury have enervated—often have benches or shelves on which are placed mattresses and blankets. ”

“ I have twice had similar rooms where, of course, the bedroom portion has been carefully screened or curtained off, but unless one is a chronic invalid, such an arrangement is no good{266} at all, and even if one is ill, and yet is able to get up, it is far better to go into a second room on the same floor, for no screen or curtain can give one any sense of real seclusion, and no one can have a room properly aired or cleaned unless it is left when one rises and not entered, save perhaps for dressing purposes, for the rest of the day. ”

“ In a large room the risk is diminished, because there would be a greater distance between the bed and window, or a space for a sheltering screen. Now, in a small room, where fresh air is still more essential and precious, the chances are that the window might open directly on the bed, which would probably stand in a draught between door and fireplace as well. ”

“ Her little bed-sitting-room was like a lair, and she went out from it into this vast, dun world, with its smoke-gray houses, its glaring streets of shops, its dark streets of homes, its orange-lit windows, under skies of dull copper or muddy gray or black, much as an animal goes out to seek food. ”

“ Side or drop lights should be near the dressing-mirror, and a convenient stand or drop light, well shaded, should be placed near the head of the bed. And a well-arranged table light for reading and sewing is of great convenience in a large bedroom which is used at all as a sitting-room. ”

“ A sick and bath room might probably be obtained in the galleries: if you are inclined for the sake of appearance, to make the centre building two stories high, you might bring the wings nearer to the centre, and accommodate most of the convalescent patients with bed rooms in the upper story. ”

“ The room is to be shaded, not by curtains round the bed—for, save in special circumstances, curtains should be banished from the nursery—nor by closed shutters which exclude both light and air, but by letting down the blinds, so as to have a sort of twilight in the room, and by shading any light which at night may be burned in the apartment ”

“ This includes a great deal of eating, a great deal of attendance, the use of reading-rooms and smoking-rooms—which, however, always seem to be open to the public as well as to the guests,—and a bedroom with accommodation which is at any rate as good as the average accommodation of hotels in Europe. In the large Eastern towns baths are attached to many of the rooms. I always carry my own, and have never failed in getting water. ”

“ Following its different faces, the eye might penetrate, by many a door, open at that hour for the passage of the air from off the sea, through long suites of rooms, furnished and fitted in the manner described, all lighted by shaded lamps that spread a soft and gentle glow around. ”

“ Each long and lofty room is divided into a series of enclosures or cabins by substantial partitions about eight feet high, and in each of these separate rooms—all of which are lighted by several windows or by gas-branches in the main apartment—there is a neat comfortable bed and bedstead, with space for a box, a seat, and a small table or shelf. ”

“ Sleeping accommodation—that is to say, shed accommodation—is provided for about one-quarter of the number confined there. During fine weather it is no hardship upon the natives to sleep in the open yard provided that they have some covering. ”

“ The beds of the family are simply close, dark recesses in the wall, in which there are bunks or shelves, and on these the mattresses and bed clothing are placed, the occupants mounting by means of wooden steps to this ill-ventilated and most uninviting resting-place. ”

“ In the first place, you are to discard from your mind all images of two rooms and folding-doors, with a passage six feet wide, a narrow carpeted flight of steps, and a bed-room prepared for the ladies to uncloak in, and another in which the men can brush their hair and hide their hats. ”

“ The sitting-room was, like the exterior of the cottage, very irregular and very pretty. It stood at one end of the house, and there were windows upon three sides of the room,—an oriel at the end opposite the door, a bay opening on to the verandah, and three latticed windows with deep oaken seats upon the other side. ”

“ Here are twelve living-rooms and twenty-one bedrooms, and only six of the latter have any provision or possibility for the admission of light and air, excepting through the family sitting- and living-room; being utterly dark, close, and unventilated. ”

“ But in these early days of seclusion the lonely patient has opportunity for much thinking. Lying in bed in a room which, as a recent writer described it, is richly decorated with a white ceiling, four white walls, a door, a window and a floor, he has indeed time for thought and for thought without distraction. ”

“ In one a woman and five children sleep in one room, but, as it is large enough to have two windows, they can keep one open, and are better off than many parties of four in smaller rooms, where the bed perforce comes under the only window. ”

“ We go through endless school and class-rooms, filled with girls who look with some astonishment at me as I walk behind my elders, and so upstairs to the dormitories, which are long and wide, with windows on both sides, and partitioned off into narrow bedrooms just large enough to contain a bed and a small square box, while a curtained shelf runs across from one side to the other exactly above the bed, and a thick curtain closes in the room at the entrance. ”

“ The guest room where you sleep at night must be shared with others. Along the inner wall stands a raised ledge of bricks. It is built like an oven and is heated with cattle-dung beneath; and on the platform the sleeper, if not half suffocated, is at any rate half roasted. ”

“ The drawing rooms—hung in gray and black with immense bronze lamps that sent out about a needleful of light, and a few gleaming legs of chairs and tables showing in the distance—gave an impression of bareness, as of not yet being ready for occupancy. ”

“ In the sleeping-room there should be no curtains, and the least possible amount of furniture, and, during the hot season, the bed should stand in the middle of the room. It is advisable to have no light in the bedroom, but good lights are a necessity in the dressing-rooms. ”

“ With tables, chairs, bookcases, and sofas comfortably disposed, this ample central room above and below is, in many respects, the most agreeable lounging room of the house; while the parlors below and the chambers above, opening upon it, form agreeable withdrawing rooms for purposes of greater privacy.
It is customary with many persons to sleep with bedroom windows open,—a very imperfect and often dangerous mode of procuring that supply of fresh air which a sleeping-room requires. ”

“ Many smart and pretty-looking bedrooms are discovered by their sick owner to be very different abodes to what they seemed to him in health. Awkwardly-placed doors and windows produce unsuspected draughts; the too close proximity of an ill-arranged staircase or housemaid's closet becomes a serious trouble, and a low pitched ceiling prevents proper ventilation. It is more difficult than one imagines to find in a badly proportioned room a single convenient place for the patient's bed. ”

“ If a single bed room can be procured, more ought not to be looked for; but it is not always that even this is to be had, and those who travel through the country must often submit to be crammed into rooms where there is scarcely sufficient space to walk between the beds. ”

“ All{124} the housework is done behind the screen, the housemaids entering by the curtained door, and the invalid is not worried by the sight of bed-making operations, while her room always looks nice, and she can receive there anyone she may care to see, which she could not do were the room frankly a bed-chamber and nothing else. ”

“ Bedroom?—Is not what we want to get into a bedroom, fresh air, the most important thing of all, and sunshine, not merely light, but sunlight? What we want to get out of a bedroom, foul air? An unaired bedroom is a box of foul air. Opening of windows: but windows differ so much in their construction one from the other, that no general rule can be laid down, except that in all cases there must be ventilation near the ceiling; and the Health Missioner must see the kind of window and how it opens, in order to show the best way of airing the room. ”

“ We sit in a room above stairs; and we have one lodging-room, with two single beds, a sort of lumber-room, and a small, low, unceiled room, which I have papered with newspapers, and in which we have put a small bed. Our servant is an old woman of sixty years of age, whom we took partly out of charity. ”