logologo-optometry

Our eyes and how to preserve them from infancy to old age, with special information about spectacles

Catalogue Number: 1707
Our eyes and how to preserve them from infancy to old age, with special information about spectacles
Category: Book
Sub-Category: Book of historical note
Author: BROWNING, John
Year Of Publication/Manufacture: 1886
Edition: 5th Edition
Time Period: 19th C
Place Of Publication/Manufacture: London
Publisher/Manufacturer: Billing and Sons, Printers
Description Of Item: Original printed buff cloth, 108 pages plus 16 unnumbered pages of advertisements and testimonials plus 32 pages of book advertisments. Illustrated throughout with sketches illustrating correct reading position, reading by lamp light and firelight and numerous illustrations of spectacles.
Historical Significance: John Browning (1835-1925) is described on the title page as FRAS (Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society) and FRMS (Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society?) and optician to her Majesty's government. He had shops in the Strand, London and in Kensington. The one in the Strand was at No 63. An advertisment published in 1891 describes Browning as an ophthalmic optician and states he may be consulted personally at that address, 'free of charge, respecting spectacles for all forms of defective vision between the hours of ten and four daily, except on Saturday, when his hours will be ten to twelve' The advertisment refers to this book. The chapters of the book include those on the human eye, light, colour blindness, colour, how to preserve eyesight, care of the eyes, use of coloured glasses, old sight, long sight, short sight with a number of chapters on various kinds of spectacles. The archive holds the 7th edition of 1898 held in the Aitken collection Cat No 49. The first edition was probably published in 1883. Each ediiton is claimed to have been revised and enlarged.
How Acquired: Donated by Peter Dywer
Date Acquired: Nov 2010
Condition: Good, but bottom half of title page excised
Location: Archive room. East wall. Books of historical note

Search the archive:

Author or Inventor:
Catalogue #
Name of Donor