logologo-optometry

The diaphragm test - the new registering instrument and its mode of use

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Catalogue Number: 1864
The diaphragm test - the new registering instrument and its mode of use
Category: Book
Sub-Category: Manual, for instruments etc
Author: HARMAN M Bishop
Year Of Publication/Manufacture: 1910
Edition: Reprint
Time Period: 1900 to 1939
Place Of Publication/Manufacture: Croydon UK
Publisher/Manufacturer: Gowlands Ltd
Description Of Item: Dark blue card cover, 15 pages plus a title page and a blank back page. It is a reprint of a paper by Harman originally published in The Ophthamoscope July 1910. The reprint was published by the optical supplies house Gowlands Ltd to promote the Diaphragm test. It is undated but on page 15 is a note advising to 'medical officers of the RAF' to consult RAF publication No 130 published by H M Stationery Office. This note suggests the reprint may have been published during World War 2 when the test may have been used to detect malingerers.
Historical Significance: NATHANIEL BISHOP HARMAN, MA (Cantab) BCh (Cantab). FRCS (1869-1945) was educated at the City of London School and Cambridge, graduating with a double first in the Natural Sciences Tripos in 1897. He joined the medical school of the Middlesex Hospital, where he came under the influence of William Lang, with whom he worked in the Eye Department as clinical assistant. He did a great deal of anatomical teaching both at Cambridge and in London, before he went to South Africa as a Civil Surgeon in the Boer War. At Moorfields he worked with Treacher Collins. He was elected ophthalmic surgeon to the Belgrave Hospital for Children and later to the West London Hospital, where he was also lecturer in ophthalmology. He is best remembered for the work which he did with James Kerr in low vision through the foundation of special classes in the schools of the L.C.C. education authority, where partially sighted children were segregated and taught by special methods. He was a prolific author, and his 'Aids to Ophthalmology" reached its eighth edition. A number of surgical instruments carry his name. His diaphragm test for binocular vision was demonstrated at the Ophthalmological Society in 1909, and immediately became a popular instrument, of great help in detecting malingerers. [Source obituary Brit J Ophthal 1945. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/.../pdf/brjopthal00687-0060.pdf.] The diaphragm test has an aperture between the observer and a test target posiitons so that the right and left eyes view only the central portion of the target, while the right eye only sees the left part of the target and vice versa.
How Acquired: Ex Nathan Library
Condition: Very good
Location: Archive office. Pamphlet and ephemera filing cabinet. Drawer 4

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