Spectacles and the Victorians - (Social Histories of Medicine) by Gemma Almond-Brown (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book explores how the Victorians standardised vision and transformed spectacle use. It offers new insights into how technology and its adoption in medical and non-medical contexts shaped, and continues to shape, our understanding of sensory perception and the assimilation of assistive devices.

Book Synopsis

This is the first full-length study of spectacles in the Victorian period. It examines how the Victorians shaped our understanding of functional visual capacity and the concept of 20:20 vision. Demonstrating how this unique assistive device can connect the histories of medicine, technology and disability, it charts how technology has influenced our understanding of sensory perception, both through the diagnostic methods used to measure visual impairment and the utility of spectacles to ameliorate its effects. Taking a material culture approach, the book assesses how the design of spectacles thwarted ophthalmologists' attempts to medicalise their distribution and use, as well as creating a mainstream marketable device on the high street.

From the Back Cover

20:20 vision shapes the way we view our world. It dictates modern categories of ocular functioning as well as the degree to which technology should ameliorate it.
This book traces the Victorian origins of 20:20 vision. As the first full-length historical study of spectacles and vision testing, it draws together existing scholarship on ophthalmology, medicalisation, disability, normalisation, assistive technology, fashion, medical capitalism and sensory history. It interconnects these often disparate fields of study, and offers new insights into how technology - and its related historical actors - shape the meaning and experience of sensory perception and disability more broadly.
In considering the ways in which spectacles altered the experience and meaning of seeing in a variety of different contexts, Spectacles and the Victorians adopts a design model of disability. The material culture of spectacles - largely gleaned from two collections at the Science Museum in London - reveals that the functional and non-functional aspects of Victorian spectacle design created a non-medical object, a multifaceted device able to perform and even normalise attitudes to partial sight.

About the Author

Gemma Almond-Brown is an Honorary Research Fellow at Swansea University and Research Development Officer at National Museum Wales