Notes on Social History 



Thursday was also known as Shere Thursday, "because 

 antiently people would that day shere theye hedes and clypp 

 theyr berdes, and so make them honest against Easter day." 



The Discovery of Spectacles. 



At a recent meeting of the Berlin Society of the History of the 

 Natural Sciences and Medicine, Professor Julius Hirschberg pre- 

 sented a communication dealing with the history of the discovery of 

 spectacles. He said that lenses for the improvement of the visual 

 power were unknown among ancient peoples, whether Egyptians, 

 Greeks, or Romans. They knew and used the art of polishing glass 

 and rock crystal, but they were unacquainted with the use of these 

 substances as aids to the eye. This is ^hown by many passages in 

 Pliny and Seneca. The Emperor Nero had a smaragdus which he 

 used as an eyeglass, but it is not clear whether or not it was a con- 

 cave lens. The Chinese and Arabs had no earlier knowledge of 

 spectacles than Europeans. The Chinese, indeed, long before the 

 Christian era, had various kinds of concave mirrors, but they did not 

 use them as spectacles. The statement of a French investigator 

 that spectacles are an ancient discovery of the Chinese is erroneous, 

 and according to Professor Hirschberg it is certain that spectacles 

 were introduced into China from Europe in the fifteenth century. In 

 the Talmud there is no mention of spectacles. The first certain 

 reference dates from the year 1270. The Englishman, Roger Bacon, 

 seems to have been the first who did anything towards the discovery 

 of spectacles. He lived from 1214 to 1294, studied at Oxford and 

 Paris, and taught at Oxford, where his learning gained for him the 

 name of Doctor Mirabilis. He determined the position of the focal 

 point in spherical concave reflectors, and gave directions for the 

 making of parabolic burning glasses. In 1267 he had to clear him- 

 self from a charge of being a magician. He did this in his Opus 

 Majus, in which he set forth his numerous optical experiments and 

 discoveries. In it he speaks of magnifying glasses, which he said 

 were useful to old people by making them see better. We hear in 

 this book for the first time of the magnifying glass and its use. The 

 actual discoverer of spectacles was probably Salvino degli Armati, 

 a Florentine nobleman who died in 1317. Much was done for the 

 popularisation of spectacles by the Dominican friar, Alexander von 

 Spina, who died in 1338. The spectacles first constructed were con- 

 vex, and there is proof of their use since the middle of the fourteenth 

 century. We hear first of concave glasses for short-sighted persons 



