Optician

“ The optician may succeed in making what is considered to be a satisfactory adjustment, and the most eminent ophthalmologist may fail. I personally know of one specialist, a man of international reputation, who fitted a patient sixty times with glasses without affording him the slightest relief. ”

“ An optometrist examines eyes for refractive error, recognizes (but does not treat) diseases of the eye, and fills prescriptions for eyeglasses. The optician is an artisan qualified to grind lenses, fill prescriptions, and fit frames.
The effect of § 2 is to forbid the optician from fitting or duplicating lenses without a prescription from an ophthalmologist or optometrist. In practical effect, it means that no optician can fit old glasses into new frames or supply a lens, whether it be a new lens or one to duplicate a lost or broken lens, without a prescription. ”

“ If, after reading a short time, your eyes begin to trouble you, why not have this ailment relieved, by properly fitted glasses? We have an expert optician, and do our own grinding. Satisfaction guaranteed. ”

“ But the patients who never find a pair of lenses satisfactory, and who pass half their lives in the optician's office, who suffer from troublesome ailments of various kinds resulting from their eye troubles ”

“ The justification for this feeling should be based not upon the commercial motive of the optician but upon his ignorance. A physician uninformed as to eye troubles is just as unsafe as an optician determined to sell glasses. ”

“ Hence cloth or paper is likely to leave microscopic inequalities apparently polished, and this may be sufficient to scatter over the field a very perceptible amount of light which should go to forming the image. All first class objectives and mirrors are in fact polished on optician’s pitch. ”

“ Through the ascending ranks of artisans this adjustment of brain and muscle becomes more delicate, reaching a rare degree of precision in, for example, the optician who grinds and shapes the glasses for spectacles, microscope, and telescope. ”

“ You take your watch to a watchmaker, not a chemist; take your eyes to an oculist, and if you cannot afford to see one privately, get an eye-hospital note. (To allow a chemist or "optician" to try lenses until he finds a pair through which you "see better" is very dangerous.) ”

“ He who possesses and can spare the requisite means, will naturally provide himself with an instrument from the optician; but there are no doubt many who, while taking a great interest in this and kindred subjects, are so circumstanced that their outlay for scientific purposes must be limited to a very small sum. ”

“ We all know the distortion that our face undergoes when reflected from the shining surface of a teapot or spoon, and the cylindrical mirrors that hang in the shop windows of many opticians are the source of much amusement to the passers by, whose physiognomies are shown to them either lengthened to many times their natural size, or widened to an extent that is ludicrously hide-ous, according to the position in which the mirror is hung. ”

“ The optician has risen to the emergency, and provided us with powers of great magnifying capacity which carry an equivalent capacity for analysis. They open up structure in a wonderful way when rightly used. ”

“ The opticians have their spectacles numbered, to suit different periods of life; but, as the short-sighted and long-sighted conditions exist in a thousand different degrees, each person should select for himself such as will enable him to read without effort at the usual distance. ”

“ The earlier opticians who toiled, one after another, to bring the microscope to perfection, never dreamed, in their most ambitious moments, of the value of the gift that their labour was to confer upon mankind. ”

“ We are assured by optical metaphysicians, or metaphysical opticians, that, in the operations of vision, we never get beyond the eye itself, or the representations that are depicted therein. We see nothing, they tell us, but what is delineated within the eye. Now, the way in which a plain man should meet this statement is this—he should ask the metaphysician what eye he refers to. Do you allude, sir, to an eye which belongs to my visible body, and forms a small part of the same; or do you allude to an eye which does not belong to my visible body, and which constitutes no portion thereof? ”

“ In choosing appliances for observational purposes, the observer will of course be guided by his means and requirements. If his inclination lead him to enter a particular department of research, he will take care to provide himself with such instruments as are specially applicable to the work in hand. Modern opticians have effected so many improvements, and brought out so many special aids to smooth the way of an observer, that it matters little in which direction he advances; he will scarcely find his progress impeded by want of suitable apparatus. ”

“ The peculiar appearances known as spectres in optics are certain illusions of vision in which an object is apparently presented to the view which does not really exist. In such cases either the brain, the retina, or the optic nerve are unnaturally excited, and made sensitive to an appearance that, physically speaking, does not exist. There is such a close connexion between the senses and the mind, that we continually, and without knowing it, transfer to the physical world that which belongs to the domain of thought. ”

“ Of all the senses none is more frequently the seat of such deceptive judgments than that of sight; and in the science of physiological optics a very considerable share of attention is claimed by optical illusions. For the purposes of convenience, we may draw a distinction between these illusions, which are the direct result of certain properties or imperfections of the eye as an optical instrument, and those which arise from obliquities of judgment in interpreting the sensations optically impressed upon the retina of the eye. ”

“ Op′tic (Pope) , an organ of sight: an eye.—adv. Op′tically.—ns. Optic′ian, one skilled in optics: one who makes or sells optical instruments; Op′tics (sing.) , the science of the nature and laws of vision and light; Optim′eter, Optom′eter, an instrument for measuring the refractive powers of the eye; Optom′etry, the measurement of the visual powers.—Optic axis, the axis of the eye—that is, a line going through the middle of the pupil and the centre of the eye. ”

“ The retinoscope is an instrument used to measure the refraction of the eye. It throws a beam of light into the pupil by reflection from a mirror, the light being either outside the instrument—above and behind the subject—or arranged within it by means of an electric battery. On looking through the sight-hole one sees a larger or smaller part of the pupil filled with light, which in normal human eyes is a reddish yellow, because this is the color of the retina, but which is green in a cat's eye, and might be white if the retina were diseased. ”

“ By inspecting a dead carcass we shall never discover the principle of life; by inspecting a dead eye, or a camera obscura, we shall never discover the principle of vision. Yet, though there is no seeing in a dead eye, or in a camera obscura, optics deal exclusively with such inanimate materials; and hence the student who studies them will do well to remember, that optics are the science of vision, with the "fact" of vision left entirely out of the consideration. ”

“ Never is it worth while to buy from a jeweler, a grocer, or a hardware store a pair of spectacles, much less to buy them from an itinerant peddler, since an oculist, with his particular apparatus, can measure the seeing ability of each eye and fit each eye with the necessary lens to restore normal vision. It is better to have no glasses than to have glasses that are wrong. ”

“ The room is made perfectly dark; a brilliant light is then placed near the head of the patient, and the rays are reflected by a series of small mirrors into his eye, as if they came from the eye of the observer; then, by looking through the central aperture of the instrument, the oculist can examine the illuminated interior of the eyeball, and perceive every detail of structure, healthy or morbid, as accurately and clearly as we can see any part of the exterior of the body. ”

“ In the eye, we discover a most accurate optical instrument, adapted to converge the rays of light at its posterior part. It is composed of a spherical box, containing transparent media of different densities, by which the rays of light are conveyed to a point, so as to impress a minute image of the visible appearance of external objects upon the retina or expansion of the optic nerve, by which the impression is conveyed to the brain, so as to bring us acquainted with external objects. ”

“ You know that the eye has been called the 'window of the soul'. The phrase is trite; but it contains a germ of truth. I can tell a great deal from the eye, as much as from the palm or the voice. If you don't mind, I'd like to examine yours with the ophthalmoscope. My methods are my own; but I don't hesitate to make use of the instruments known to modern science. After all, the ophthalmoscope merely enables one to see through the cornea into the retina and the optic plexus."
With that he called in Valeska, who darkened the great studio. ”

“ Writing on Optics, he says: “’Tis pleasant to undeceive the eye in the common accidents of life, and to see it approach, in some measure, towards that certainty of judging and apprehending visibles that it will attain to at the day of resurrection, when it will be above the power of being cheated by concave or convex, or deluded by a refraction or reflection. This may, in a great measure, be accomplished in this world by such as give themselves up to the study of optics.” ”

“ When the focusing apparatus of the eye is not perfect, it can be made so by putting in front of the eye the proper kind of lens. There is nothing strange or mysterious about it. In some cases, the eye focuses the light before it reaches the retina. Such cases are known as nearsightedness and are corrected by having placed in front of the eyes concave lenses of the proper strength. These lenses diverge the rays and make them focus on the retina. ”

“ The beginning of optics [6] will be to look up at the light, a thing natural to children; for the instant it becomes visible, they turn their eyes to it. They must, however, be watched, and not be permitted to look with fixed eyes on excessive light and brilliance, strongly affecting the power of vision, especially at first, lest that power be weakened, or extinguished by overstraining. Let them have the means of seeing moderate light, especially of a green color, and gradually anything that shines. ”

“ More acute observers would see that something more than mere invention had been at work, and would suppose that the drawings had been the result of marvellously careful induction, made by comparing the phenomena observed in the dead eye with the symptoms of living patients. At last, in the new civilization, someone living outside the tempest of rival theories, and studying optics for himself, would re-discover the principle of the ophthalmoscope, make one, and actually see living retinas. ”

“ Thus, that there should be eyes capable of seeing, the laws of optics must be satisfied, reflection, refraction and the rest, just as exactly in the making of an eye as in that of a telescope. De facto they are satisfied. ”

“ A lamplight, for example, sets in motion waves of ether, which pass in through the pupil of the eye, to the retina, where the rods and cones transmit the vibration through the optic nerve to the brain, and then the mind perceives the light. (Note, p. 236.)
THE USE OF THE CRYSTALLINE LENS. [Footnote: The uses of the eye and ear are dependent upon the principles of Optics and Acoustics. They are therefore best treated in Physics.] —A convex lens, as a common burning glass, bends the rays of light which pass through it, so that they meet at a point called the focus. ”

“ We are so accustomed to merely play with children, that we are easily blinded to the full seriousness of such requests.
We cannot break off these reflections on the image of the retina without making mention of a remarkable spot in the background of the eye—the yellow spot marking the entrance of the optic nerve. All perception whatever is arrested within the bounds of this spot—it is a blind point in our field of view. ”

“ To gain a clear insight into the mode in which a single lens serves to magnify objects, it will be necessary to revert to the phenomena of ordinary vision. An eye free from any defect has a considerable power of adjusting itself to very considerable distances. One of the special functions of the eye is bringing the rays of light, by a series of dioptric mechanisms, to a perfect focus on its nervous sensitive layer, the retina. ”

“ The phenomena of ocular spectra and complementary colours experienced by every one forms a curious chapter in the history of those illusions which take their origin in the eye itself. Every one has noticed that after looking fixedly at a bright light or a striking colour for a few moments, the eye preserves an impression of the object for a certain time. A very light window looked at intently for several seconds will leave the impression of its cross-bars on the retina for several minutes, the colour of the image changing at every movement of the eye. ”

“ And in the same way the laws of the reflection and refraction of light are the motive for the wonderfully ingenious and complex optical instrument, the human eye, which has the transparency [pg 084] of its cornea, the different density of its three humours, the form of its lens, the blackness of its choroid, the sensitiveness of its retina, the contracting power of its pupil, and its muscular system, accurately calculated according to those laws. ”