IJINDSIGHT 
Newsletter of the 

NA U!•J!Ht:nt:;<!T"{ INDIA. ;·i\a v ,._nut 1 

OCT 0 ~ 2001 
Optometric Historical Society QPTOMETP. UBPJlJW 

243 North Lindbergh Boulevard, St. Louis, Missouri 63141, USA 

Volume32 July 2001 Number3 

Jay Enoch's Column: 

Hands Across Time, Charles F. Prentice: A Fine Refractionist 

I had just graduated from "A Course in Optics and Optometry'' at Columbia 
University in the Spring of 1950. After some weeks during which we took our State Boards 
(in my case, New York and New Jersey), I was ordered to active service with the National 
Guard on the first day and among the first units called up for what was later termed "the 
Korean War''. 

With the rapid re-expansion of the Armed Forces, there developed immediate dire 
shortages of physicians, dentists, and optometrists to screen, process and care for the 
once-again burgeoning military. As I was "already there", I was transferred almost 
immediately from the National Guard unit to the U.S. Army Reserve, and received an early 
optometric commission in the Medical Services Corps {#7, I was told). The commission 
was conditional upon my having passed one of the licensing exams I had taken. Promptly, 
I went to see Dr. Manny Nurock in Trenton, New Jersey, and he introduced me to Dr. 
Fischer. These tremendously kind gentlemen rushed evaluation of my examination and 
shortly thereafter indicated that I had qualified for optometric licensure in New Jersey. New 
York followed within about a week. While this was going on, I was sent home temporarily 
from the Army, pending resolution of the licensing issue, completion of paperwork, and 
reassignment to Walter Reed Army Hospital for training. 

During these few months in the summer and early fall of 1950, I went to work in the 
office of our family optometrist, Dr. Maurice Hoenig. He proved to be a great teacher and 
refractionist. I learned many of the more practical aspects of our profession under his 
tutelage. 

One busy day in Dr. Hoenig's office, a tiny, thin, elderly African-American lady was 
assigned to me for examination. She was certainly perky and full of wit and charm. She 
literally jumped into the exam chair, and she was 1 02 years old! (My memory suggests 
that she had been a slave) I have never met anyone quite like her. At any rate, she had 
not had an eye exam since the early 1900s (she stated it was more than 40 years), and 
had not had any real eye/vision problems during the interim. On this occasion, she 
reported she was having some reading and sewing problems. I asked her who had last 
examined her, and she responded, "Old Doc Prentice, of course!" Really! 

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She then ''whipped out" her eye-glass case (with Charles F. Prentice's name and 
address embossed in gold on it). These were wire frames with small lenses in rather good 
shape. I refracted her, and then refracted her again, and couldn't find more than a +1-0.25 
DS difference in her distance correction from Prentice's earlier correction. She needed an 
add. I prescribed a distance and reading correction (I do not have my records for reasons 
which will become obvious shortly). She did not have a major refractive error, and her 
visual acuity was either a weak 20/20 or 20/25, there was no evident central cataract, nor 
obvious retinal or disc problems. I asked her if I could buy Dr. Prentice's lenses and case 
from her, and she said no, but she kindly gave them to me when she received her new 
correction. I never saw her after that exchange. 

After completing Army service, I was in Graduate School at Ohio State University as 
a student of the late Glenn A. Fry. Concurrently, I served as Vincent Ellerbrock's teaching 
assistant for two/three years. Knowing of Vince's great interest in the growing OSU 
Optometric Museum, I gave the box to him containing the Prentice case, the frame and 
lenses of this lively lady, and my records of the case to be added to the Museum collection. 
He was most pleased by this donation! Sadly, Vince died (prematurely) within two weeks 

for lack of what we call today a Heimlich Maneuver. Although I asked repeatedly of 
everyone in sight, the box and its contents were never located. In fact, at the recent 
Optometric Hisorical Society meeting in December, 2000, in Orlando, I asked Provost Arol 
Augsburger (now at Alabama) if he had seen this material during the time he had helped to 
develop the Celebrity Eyeware Collection at OSU. Although he had helped move Vince's 
papers and records on several occasions, he stated that he never encountered this gift. 

When the writer was still a young man, he was honored to receive the Charles F. 
Prentice Medal of the American Academy of Optometry. On the several occasions I have 
been asked to stand at the time this award is given, often I have felt a special kinship with 
Charles Prentice. I have often wished this material had been located after Vincent 
Ellerbrock's death so that we all could appreciate and value this modest part of Prentice's 
heritage and contributions to optometry. Charles F. Prentice's materials certainly would 
have qualified for the OSU Celebrity Collection as a fine representation of our profession! 

J. M. E. 

1938 monograph on the use of cycloplegia: 

OHS member Irving Bennett sent me a 30-page booklet entitled "An Investigation as 
to the t-Je~d for 'Drops' of Cycloplegics in Eye Examinations". It was report of The 
Committee on Refractive Procedure of the Minnesota Academy of Optometry. The 
members of the committee were not identified. The booklet was published by the 
American Journal of Optometry in 1938. Bennett wrote that this document may have been 
an initiative responding to Albert Fitch's 1937 bill in the Pennsylvania Legislature to get the 
use of pharmaceuticals for optometrists. He also noted that it was the profession's 
argument against cycloplegics in refraction for several decades. 

The lack of experimentation on the use of cycloplegics is discussed in the opening 

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pages of the monograph. Then divergent opinions from the literature from about twenty 
ophthalmological authorities were presented. These quotations were used to show that 
"among the leaders in the field of ophthalmology there is no agreement on the need for the 
use of a cycloplegic in ocular refractive work." (p. 13) 

Next there was a discussion of a study by Tait and Sinn in which manifest 
retinoscopy was compared to the retinoscopy findings under homatropine cycloplegia. A 
point of emphasis in the booklet was that the difference varied from 0. 75 D Jess plus with 
cycloplegia to 1 . 75 D more plus with cycloplegia. The authors wondered whether this 
variability was recognized by those who used the technique on a daily basis. The writers 
suggested that the limits of this variability were "so great as to make refractive work done 
within them of very doubtful character." (p. 21) Later the authors state the findings under 
cycloplegia are of "such variable and unreliable character as to confuse rather than help 
the examiner." (p. 30) The authors do not mention the potential diagnostic significance of 
this variability in cycloplegic effect, but rather seem to be arguing against prescribing solely 
on the basis of the cycloplegic refraction. 

About the last third of the monograph consisted of published case reports which the 
authors used to suggest to "indicate (a) that the use of 'drops' makes refractive work more 
confusing, (b) that their use adds nothing to the value or the accuracy of refractive 
technique employed during an eye examination, (c) that refractive findings are more 
variable and therefore of less value when homatropine is used as a cycloplegic in eye 
examination work, and (d) that the claims of those oculists who suggest that only 
satisfactory examinations can be made by those using the 'drops' are unfounded." (p. 30) 

The last sentence of the monograph was the authors' conclusion ''that 'drops' or 
cycloplegics are therefore unnecessary in eye examining work and their use should be 
discontinued." (p. 30) 

D. A. G. 

An overview of the history of keratoscopy: 

The Summer, 2000, issue of the Indiana Journal of Optometry contained an article 
by me and Daniel R. Gerstman entitled "The Optical Science Underlying the Quantification 
of Corneal Contour: A Short History of Keratoscopy and Indiana University Contributions" 
(volume 3, number 1 , pages 13-16). We talk about the early developers of keratoscopy as 
well as recent developments. It is interesting to note that Gullstrand had worked out all of 
the methodological and computational aspects of photokeratoscopy almost a hundred 
years ago, but he didn't have the computers to make it easily adaptable to the practitioner's 
office, and there wasn't the demand for it then that exists today because of refractive 
surgery and more detailed diagnostic capabilities. Please write me if you would like a copy 
of the article. 

D. A. G. 

i. 

L ... 

******fr~ : ·.,, ,. ~' d .... ,.. • . .. . "· •. 



Photographs taken in Italy by Jerry Abrams: 

OHS member Jerry Abrams sent in two photographs he took during his April, 2001, 
trip to Italy. Below are our black-and-white photocopied renditions of his pictures. One is a 
picture of the tombstone of Salvino Armati. Its description of him as inventor of 
eyeglasses, though famous, is probably a hoax, as has been discussed in the pages of this 
newsletter a number of times over the years. It is located at a small church in downtown 
Florence. 

The other is a photograph of one of the frescoes in the Dominican convent of San 
Nicolo of Treviso dated 1352. The scribe depicted there is wearing eyeglasses. He is 
writing on a piece of paper on the table in front of him. On a shelf at about eye level to his 
right is an open book. This is thought to be the first painting of someone wearing 
spectacles. As noted by OHS member J. William Rosenthal in his book, "Spectacles and 
Other Vision Aids: A History and Guide to Collecting," it portrays a person who lived before 
the invention of spectacles: "Ironically, fourteenth through seventeenth-century artists 
portrayed Moses, the apostles, and other biblical personalities wearing spectacles. Artists 
modernized their subjects by surrounding them with the fashionable accessories of the 
time. The earliest of these protraits is that painted at Treviso in 1352 by Tommaso da 
Modena. It portrays Hugh of St. Cher Cardinal Ugone wearing riveted spectacles on his 
nose and was done a century after his death. As with the biblical figures, the invention of 
spectacles came long after Hugh's lifetime." 



Popular science book on optics featuring photos of objects in the Science Museum. 
London: 

Light, by David Burnie, New York: DK Publishing, 1999 (first published 1992 by Dorling 
Kindersley Limited, London), 63 pages+ 1 page index, hardcover, $15.95, ISBN 0-7894-
4885-8. 

I found this book at, of all places, the local Sam's Club discount store. It is a nicely 
done popular science picture book produced in a 8.5 by 11 inch format. Two facing pages 
are each devoted to a topic, including: sources of light, shadows, reflection, refraction, 

.lenses, the eye, telescopes, microscopes, photography, color, particle and wave nature of 
light, diffraction, interference, the electromagnetic spectrum, polarization, photosynthesis 
and solar energy, electric light, fiber optics, lasers, holograms, speed of light. The pages 
are graced by color photographs and nicely produced color diagrams. 

The text is clearly written, although in a few places some simplifications are 
somewhat misleading. Each topic is developed from a historical standpoint. There are 
portraits of a number of notable persons in optics, as for example, Newton, Huygens, 
Young, Herschel, Maxwell, Fizeau, Foucault, Michelson, along with several others. 

Each pair of facing pages uses some pictures and diagrams for explanation of 
various optical principles, and often includes some photos of items of historical interest. 
There are, for example, pictures of: a model eye made in France in about 1870, a replica of 
Galilee's telescope, a replica of Newton's reflecting telescope, a Leeuwenhoek 
microscope, late nineteenth century projectors, and Swan and Edison electric lamps. 
Many of the items pictured are objects from the Science Museum in London. 

D. A. G. 

Updates on our list of repositories of items of optometric historical interest: 

In the April, 2001 issue of Hindsight, we published a list of museums, archives, and 
libraries that held items of optometric historical interest and that had been mentioned in the 
first 30 volumes of Hindsight: Newsletter of the Optometric Historical Society. We asked 
for updates and corrections from the readership and here are some of the responses we 
have received so far: 

Jerry Abrams wrote that he wanted to add the following to the list: 
"a. Luxottica Group's Museum -A Museum of Optical Instruments and Frames in Agordo, 
Italy. The museum houses one of the fullest and oldest collections in the world, including 
more than 1 ,200 pieces. There are about 700 pairs of eyeglasses, the most valuable 

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dated around 1500, with China dn Persia amongst the most interesting countries of origin. 
b. SAFILO Optical Museum- Galleria Guglielmo Tabacchi- Padova, Italy 

c. Museo dell Occhiale - Eye Glass Museum - Pieve di Cadore, Italy. An important 
collection of antique eyewear, trade signs, oil paintings, optical instruments. Established 
1986." 

Keith Lammers wrote the following by email: "I noticed in the April copy of Hindsight, 
you referred to the Albert Fitch Memorial Library of the Pennsylvania College of Optometry 
as a possible source of historical material. While we have a rather modest historical 
collection, I am writing to inform you that we have moved our campus and changed the 
library's name. The information is contained in my signature file. Keith Lammers, Director 
of Library and Learning Resources, Gerard Cottet Library, Pennsylvania College of 
Optometry, 8360 Old York Road, Elkins Park, PA 19027; phone: (215) 780-1260; fax: (215) 
780-1263; email: keith@pco.edu." 

Jerry Abrams also passed along some information he received from Charles 
Letocha concerning museums of interest in Paris. According to Letocha, the Marly 
Museum is no longer in existence. It has been purchased by Essilor, and he did not know 
of their plans for it. The Louvre contains some paintings showing eyeglasses, and another 
painting showing spectacles is on display at the Musee du Moyen Ages. Letocha rates the 
Universite Rene Descartes museum highly as a medical museum. It contains some 
cataract sets, some eye examining equipment, and some very old spectacles, including 
what may have been 18th century cataract glasses. 

Your continuing input and updates on archives, museums, and libraries with material 
relating to the history of optometry will be appreciated. 

~Managing Editor and Contributing Editor: David A. Goss (School of Optometry, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, 
U.S.A.; email: dgoss@indiana.edu) 

Contributing Editors: Henry W Hofstetter (2455 Tamarack Trail, Bloomington, IN 47401, U.S.A.); Douglas K. Penisten 
(College of Optometry, Northeastern State University, Tahlequah, OK 74464, U.S.A.); Jay M. Enoch (School of Optometry, 
Mail code 2020, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-2020 U.S.A.; email: jmenoch @socrates.berkelev .edu) 

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