JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
“For this condition, I will prescribe, for your information, a marvelous cure, the result of my experience in such cases. Take a precious stone we call sapphire. Powder it most thoroughly in a metal mortar and store it in a golden vase. Put a little into the patient’s eye every day and he will soon be cured “– from the Medieval medical text De Oculis, by Benevenutus Grassus, Stanford University Press, 1929, page 58.
Admittedly I was more interested in the illustrations in this work1 than the text, mainly (and obviously) because the images are so striking. The text is in its way a pre-scientific attempt at ‘curing” color blindness, which is a genetic disorder. The color wheels (“variable speed rotary color vision stimulator”) were intended to be rotated to produce different color senses for “color vision stimulation”–it could be used to determine whether or not color vision was being “improved”.
Most of the work was a sales vehicle for Dr. Newton’s color blindness color regenerators, or whatever, all of which could be obtained from his office in Oakland. I guess Dr. Newton was trying, but…
