What did people use to improve their vision before the invention of glasses ?

[valiant12]

This is for a short story I wrote a couple of years ago. I planned for one of the main heroines to be a expert crossbowman , but in the same time not have the best eyesight. The tech level of the setting is roughly the same as 12 century britain.In my first attempt of the story I change the character from a expert in long range weapons to a melee fighter and then decide to give her generic eyesight. However, I'm kinda tired of writing characters who live in not exactly sanitary conditions, are malnourished and have no access to modern medicine and yet have perfect health.

 

[X Equestris]

The section on precursors to glasses is brief, but there is a little here:

Glasses - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Butterfly]

Well, you could stick with the crossbow and make her longsighted. Basically means that if she tries to read anything or focus on close range objects her vision will blur, or double up, or in forcing her eyes to focus, she'll go cross-eyed. Depending on the type she would still be able to see at distance.

 

[TheCatholicCrow]

I'm kinda tired of writing characters who live in not exactly sanitary conditions, are malnourished and have no access to modern medicine and yet have perfect health.

Access to "modern medicine" doesn't mean modern society is necessarily healthier. You've probably heard that we recently discovered a Medieval garlic-based remedy has been found to be more effective against MRSA than we have been with our chemically manipulated medicines.

While gout may have afflicted the wealthy, they didn't have massive epidemics of diabetes and heart disease. Most of us eat genetically modified foods filled with pesticides. They didn't have the pill (which wreaks unspeakable horrors on the environment) or disposable diapers (filled with dioxins, phylates, TBT!), disposable feminine products (which contain the same poisons as disposable diapers ALONG WITH additional chemicals that purposely agitates the body to worsen and prolong bleeding which = more product consumed ea month), add to that our use of Styrofoam and plastics. Then there's cigarettes...

I think part of the problem of the notion of us being "healthier" and supposedly having better medicine (in daily life) is that we are bombarded with advertisements and statistics that tell us certain products will make us "healthier" if we consume them. For example, if you're um... "irregular" do you really need to consume Activia? Can't you just eat any yogurt or more fruit ... or better yet some sauerkraut? Medieval people wouldn't have felt the need to talk to a physician about it but in the modern era we want to solve everything with either a pill or a product. It's almost as if, as long as have a name for something and a cure, we believe we're a "healthy" society regardless of reality. We view health in terms of specific ailments rather than a state of being which culturally skews our perspective of ourselves.

I don't mean to suggest that the Medieval people had their **** together but we certainly don't. I think medieval peoples were a lot healthier and more intelligent than we give them credit for. While they had what we would call "unsanitary conditions", they had much better immunity than we could even try to replicate in the modern era. I'd like to call attention back to the article I linked above on fermented foods & sauerkraut - even when most of us eat fermented foods it's usually canned (and boiled) and therefore void of the healthy bacterias our digestive systems need in order to maintain health. The Medieval people consumed their fermented foods and drinks with fervor. It's not just as excellent way to preserve food, pickled fish / meat, veggies, and fruits (MEAD!) are unbelievably good for you. I think this - Britons 'healthier in medieval times' - pretty much supports my argument.

This article may also be of interest concerning Medieval health. Healing and Hospitals

 

[TheCatholicCrow]

Sorry for the tangent ... to answer your question concerning eyesight ...

my guess is that unless your character has VERY VERY bad vision problems, it shouldn't be too big of an issue. I didn't even realize that I needed reading glasses until I visited an Ophthalmologist. Of course, I can see better with them on but it doesn't mean I couldn't function reasonably without them. If I lived in the 12th century, chances are I would be none the wiser since I wouldn't have been staring at computer screens, texts, or reading the tiny print in books. Many Medieval people (specifically women) couldn't read anyway. But if they could ... it would be handwritten (larger) text anyway so it probably wouldn't have been a problem ... or they could have someone read it aloud to them. I can't imagine she would even notice it unless she were trying to thread a needle... or knit / crochet. I'm supposed to wear my reading glasses when I do either and (at worst) when I don't I'll get a headache or my eyes feel tired.

MEDIEVAL INVENTIONS- EYEGLASSES

If someone's eyesight was incredibly debilitating (and they didn't have a sympathetic family willing to help them) they probably wouldn't have lived very long anyway. Something as simple as not seeing a deadly spider lurking in the corner or picking the wrong berries in the forest, or not seeing the thin layer of bacteria and mold on the top of your pickle jars (a sign that the whole thing in contaminated which you have to watch for when you ferment your own foods)... not seeing the guy with a knife hiding in the bushes ... people without decent health probably wouldn't live long so I'd expect out of everyone alive you would probably find generally healthy people.

Hope this helps

 

[Laurence]

they had much better immunity than we could even try to replicate in the modern era.Healing and Hospitals

I can eat thrice reheated rice and raw chicken with no qualms. Jus' sayin'.

 

[TheCatholicCrow]

I can eat thrice reheated rice and raw chicken with no qualms. Jus' sayin'.

I have to admit ... that's resourceful and a little impressive.

But I was actually referring more to the hygiene hypothesis/biome depletion theory.

 

[kennyc]

I can eat thrice reheated rice and raw chicken with no qualms. Jus' sayin'.

Musta not been Tyson chicken. Saw this frontline program last week -- The Trouble with Chicken | FRONTLINE | PBS

 

[kennyc]

and since this is in the 'research' subform.....

it used to be that 'nature' was a bigger driver of evolution. With the technology we've become dependent on, that is less so.

There was nothing people could do about bad vision before corrective lenses. They took jobs they could do, nearsighted, farsighted, or if blind at the mercy of family, friends, community or got by as best they could. Odds of them reproducing and furthering the genetic trait were lessened. In other words nature tends to be self-correcting. We've moved into a brave new world of technological dependence and my thoughts go even further but I won't go into that here.

 

[valiant12]

Well, you could stick with the crossbow and make her longsighted. Basically means that if she tries to read anything or focus on close range objects her vision will blur, or double up, or in forcing her eyes to focus, she'll go cross-eyed. Depending on the type she would still be able to see at distance.

Interesting idea, i was planning the character to be short sighted and use some sort of lenses to compensate, preferably something that existed in reality. If i remember correctly the egyptians were very good at glassmaking and archery, and a lot of there medicine and biology knowledge were lost when the library of Alexandria burned maybe they haved some sort of sniper scope.

 

[kennyc]

Glasses - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You may be right about the Egyptians:

Earliest evidence of eyesight magnification comes from the exploits of the Ancient Egyptian engineers in the 5th century BC. Technology of creating simple glass lenses came to Rome, where they were used in 1st century AD by Roman Emperor Nero. It was recorded that Seneca the Younger introduced corrective glasses to Nero as device that can enlarge letters to their clear form, no matter how small they are. These early versions of lenses soon became almost forgotten, sitting on the fringe of history for more than thousand years, until the arrival of Renaissance.

Corrective Lenses - History of Corrective Lenses