Being “four-eyes” myself, and having a whole family that wears either glasses or contacts, leads me to considered how people made due prior to the common use of corrective lenses. For example, way back in the Middle Ages, or even back to the pyramids, did people have to deal with the same blurry vision that many of us deal with today? It seems like it would be a big disadvantage in the race of survival of the fittest. Wouldn’t the gene for bad vision be weeded out? Or is vision here in the 21st century (admittedly damaged by TV and computer) so much worse than it was way back when? What sorts of coping skills did people use back then?
Until people had to read things, I doubt that blurry vision was much of a problem. Without my glasses, I can see well enough to do things like work a farm, or cook. You just get used to the blurriness and compensate.
I discovered the “pinhole” effect on my own, as a young’un. Curl up your forefinger really tight, to make a pinhole, and look through that. It helps. Squinting also helps. Whether or not people in antiquity developed a pinhole effect, they certainly knew to squint.
Trinopus (a tad deaf, too…)
For most people it wouldn’t matter much. Keep in mind for most of civilization’s history 99% of the population never traveled anywhere. Immanuel Kant in his entire 80+ years never went more than a day’s horse ride from his home town of Koenigsberg. And that isn’t strange at all, most people never went far from their home village/town. Most people were farmers and tied to the land either by law or by the simple fact that before the modern age even if you were free to move you couldn’t really do it because a farm is insane back breaking labor all day long prior to the industrial revolution, and if you weren’t there doing it no one else was and your family starved to death.
You could easily compensate for blurry vision just because you’d pretty much know every square foot you ever walked on on a regular basis.
You wouldn’t be an archer in the King’s army or probably a very good professional soldier or anything, but most likely you would never be in such a position anyway.
Since the life expectancy was much shorter then, and many vision problems worsen with age, I imagine it wasn’t as much of a problem for elderly 30 year olds.
I know someone whose vision is poor and uncorrectable; she can’t read the temperature on the oven or the instructions on a food box, so she asks her husband to read it for her. They had husbands even in the Middle Ages, so I’ve been told.
My vision is bad enough that without my glasses on, I can’t even find my glasses. (Seriously. I have to leave them in the exact same spot every night or I wind up just sliding my hand along the top of the dresser hoping to find them.) I can’t recognize people from more than a foot or two away. I can’t safely navigate stairs because my depth perception gets all shitty, etc. So would I have just been dead at an early age or considered an invalid or what?
You would have been considered near blind. But people compensate for that. Do you have a cute earring?
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that your vision simply wouldn’t have become this bad had you grown up in that era. Sure, you’d still be near-sighted, but isn’t our constant reading, close work, and time spent indoors largely responsible for the modern epidemic of myopia?
I have feel around for my glasses, too, or just put my face one inch above the surface I’m searching.
Maybe, but I got my first pair of glasses when I was 9, and my vision’s been about as bad as it is now since my early teens. In my case I suspect some genetic influence.
Of course you could get by without corrective lenses if you were just mildly visually impaired in the Middle Ages. As someone who’s struggled with some serious vision issues (six major surgeries and several minor procedures), the question as to how people coped is one that has interested me for some time. One eye surgeon told me there’s some speculation over whether the incidence of nearsightedness was as great then as it is today, but I don’t think there’s any way to substantiate that–and the guy was a surgeon, not an historian. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know with any degree of certainty.
It probably was no less prevalent than it was in ancient times, however. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, “Blindness was widespread in the ancient Middle East.” Blindness
The possibilities are 1) Vision problems were less common back in the day. 2) There were a lot of people who couldn’t see well but managed to stumble along. 3) There were, in fact, a number of blind people, if by “blind” we mean, “people who could not see well enough to adequately function without help.”
Whatever the incidence, there was certainly no way to adequately compensate for serious impairment. Squinting, while natural, would only be entirely satisfactory for people with very mild impairment. Pinholes are helpful only for people whose vision impairment is due to astigmatism, as has been explained to me by ophthalmologists.I have used the pinhole effect after surgeries, while my corneas had a lot of surface irregularities–useful while stationary, but it’s tough to walk around safely. According to Wikipedia, the use of magnifying lenses or glasses dates back to ancient times, but it seems to me they would have only been valuable for “close work,” not distance, until spectacles were invented and refined. I think there were quite a few blind people, and many more who just couldn’t see very well, especially in middle and old age. I would have been one of the former–yet another reason I’m glad I was born in the 20th instead of the 12th cuentury.
How? Does bad vision prevent people from reproducing?
I’m sure part of it is genetic, not to mention the fact that people with poor vision are more likely than ever to pass on their bad vision genes. However, you were presumably reading, spending large amounts of time indoors, and doing “close work” from the age of 3 or 4. Plenty of time to exacerbate your vision problems by age 9.
Well, if your vision is bad enough, you’re not quite sure of what’s going where.
But seriously, if you are blind enough to have problems getting around, your marriage prospects and ability to support a family are going to be seriously limited in the age before corrective lenses.
Heck, might even be beneficial, if you can’t see what she looks like.
in the Middle Ages people with money had seeing eye peasants.
There’s a story that one of the Roman emperors (Nero, I think) discovered that he could see much better when he held a big jewel against his eye. The way it was cut just happened to mimic a corrective lens by chance.
There was an interesting factoid on a QI episode recently - the Chinese did not develop or adopt eyeglasses or magnifying lenses until quite late (15th century according to wikipedia). This meant that academic developments proceeded much slower, as age and eyesight became limiting factors much earlier than for european thinkers who could work on into old age by using glasses.
Si
Indigenous populations tend to have lower incidence of myopia. As they become more integrated into modern society, their myopia increases:
Trans Am Ophthalmol Soc. 2003; 101: 107–112. “A myopic shift in Australian Aboriginals: 1977-2000” by Hugh R Taylor, T A Robin, V C Lansingh, L M Weih, and J E Keeffe
I’m not sure why they say this. Photographers know that a narrower aperture increases depth of field. Though you noted that it’s tough to walk around safely - that I can agree with: by necessity the field of vision becomes rather narrow.
Raise a glass to cataract surgeons as well.
grrrr.
30 year olds weren’t ‘elderly’. Average life expectancy was short due to infant mortality and childhood diseases. Those who made it out of those bottlenecks weren’t dropping dead at 30.
Qualification: Life expectancy was lower among adults as well, though yes infant mortality drove much of reduction in life expectancy at birth.
During the Upper Paleolithic age, life expectancy at age 15 was… 54. (33 at birth). In Ancient Rome, life expectancy at 15 was… 52 (28 at birth).