Quackery

Since the beginning of recorded time, people have been exploited with promises of better vision. Besides dubious medical cures (see our antique medication section), numerous “experts”, including some prominent physicians, have invented devices, methods, and theories to fix one’s vision (without glasses). In 1906, congress established the Pure Food and Drug act to make pharmaceutical companies honest about what their medications could do and what they were made of, but it wasn’t until 1931, when the Food and Drug administration was established. The FDA was not allowed to police medical devices until 1938. Up until then, the only recourse consumers had against quack devices was the post office. If a device was found to be misleading in its claims, the USPS could accuse and convict them of mail fraud. So, what items cropped up before then? Take a look and see…

The first of the commercial “eye massagers” was this one, developed by Dr. J. Ball in 1851, called the Lignum Vitae eye cup and cornea restorer. Designed to massage the cornea and relax the muscles in an effort to restore failing vision due to old age.

Actina vaporizer, c. 1886. This device claimed to cure blindness and deafness by inhaling the substances inside and applying to the eye. The ingredients in it were, among other things, oil of mustard, sassafras oil, and belladonna. So outrageous were its’ claims, it was the catalyst for the creation of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.

The ideal sight restorer, circa 1901, once again, used suction to massage the eyes and fix a person’s vision,curing everything from nearsightedness to cataracts..

The Nue-Vita Percival Eye Masseur(Oculizer), circa 1928. These were sold door-to-door and in pubs throughout England. They were eventually shut down when authorities found out there was no Dr. Percival as salesmen had claimed. This particular one came with correspondence between the owner and the company trying to explain why it wasn’t working the way it was supposed to.
The Barrett Eye Normalizer, circa 1928. This would block out all light and massage the eyeball, relaxing it and eliminating all vision problems. Urbane Barrett, manufacturer of the device, was convicted of mail fraud in 1937.

The violet ray machine, invented by Nikola Tesla and named for the violet color of the electricity produced, claimed to heal a number of diseases. The instrument provided a high voltage, low current electrical charge. According to the instruction booklet included with the double eye attachment, it cured diseases of the eye, including cataracts, conjunctivitis, and retinal diseases. This is a working model.
Iriscope, c. 1912, Made by Dr. Leon Vannier, a homeopathic physician who believed he could diagnose diseases of the whole body by scanning a person’s iris with his iriscope!
SPECTRO-CHROME- METRY
No museum of quackery would be complete without one of the holy grails of quackery, the spectrochromemetry machine. Basically just a light bulb with colored slides, Colonel Dinshah Ghidaili invented this in 1920 to cure all ailments using the philosophy that certain colors heal certain parts of the body. He supposedly cured people of cataracts, glaucoma, and made a blind person see, but when taken to the Supreme Court, it was all found out to be lies. In 1952, the FBI raided his clinic, lined up the machines, proceeded to smash them, and then carted him off to prison. To this very day, there is a PERMANENT Federal injunction against the spectro-chrome. For more info, see the following article from Ripleys Believe It or Not Museum:
The Lunacy Of Light Medicine: Spectro-Chrome Metry
In 1855, a certain Dr. Turnbill, from Edinburgh, claimed he could cure blindness by using the fumes of prussic acid (cyanide gas), which is lethal!!
In addition to various devices, there were also a fair number of unscrupulous doctors that would hold roving clinics, or brick and mortar institutions claiming to heal people of various eye inflictions. The one on the left was in 1885 and the Bemis Eye Sanitarium was in 1889.

This book from 1917, written by Bernarr McFadden, was one of the first to say in print, that he could fix people’s vision without glasses. He wrote a series of books on all different aspects of health, and how they could be controlled by diet and exercise.

William Bates, a once prominent physician, teamed up with Bernarr McFadden, to come up with a money-making scheme to get people to not wear glasses. He believed (falsely, as proven scientifically) that poor eyesight was due to nervous tension and stress on the ocular muscles. Although his methods have been proven ineffective , his books continue to sell.

Iridology, or the reading of pigmentation patterns in the iris that relate to the health and defects in the body, was founded in the late 1800s by the physician Ignaz von Peczely. He observed that the iris of an owl and a human who both had broken legs were similar, so concluded that the iris could show what was wrong with the body. (makes sense, right?) Iridology has been shown to be false in its claims when 3 iridologists could not correctly identify which patients had kidney problems in a controlled study. This book and iris chart from 1904 comes from a sanitarium outside of Chicago.
Along the same lines as iridology, phrenology uses the contour of the skull to predict the status of various organs and a persons’ mental state. It has long been considered a pseudoscience, even when this magazine was published in 1881.
During the late 1920s, and through the depression era, a number of companies began selling mail order glasses, with a do-it-yourself determination of your prescription. The largest of these companies, the True-fit optical corporation, was shut down by the post office in the late 1930’s for mail fraud.

Designed by the “Institute for Better Vision”, the Lax optic vision rehabilitation program,designed to make you see better without glasses, is just a pair of glasses made with a bunch of pinholes in the lenses!

An eye relaxation device, invented by a couple of chiropractors! C. 1940

Health Eyes Without Glasses, by Lelord Kordel, could be achieved by maintaining a strict diet and by buying lots of different vitamins sold by , you guessed it, Lelord Kordel! Printed in 1942.

Here is another pinhole glasses scam from the 1960s, called the 20/20s, purportedly developed by an “eye doctor” .