Early Popular Visual Culture ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/repv20 The spectacle of vision: eye and eyesight in the nineteenth-century scientific press Corinne Doria To cite this article: Corinne Doria (2022): The spectacle of vision: eye and eyesight in the nineteenth-century scientific press, Early Popular Visual Culture, DOI: 10.1080/17460654.2022.2052923 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17460654.2022.2052923 Published online: 01 Apr 2022. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=repv20 EARLY POPULAR VISUAL CULTURE https://doi.org/10.1080/17460654.2022.2052923 The spectacle of vision: eye and eyesight in the nineteenth-century scientific press Corinne Doria School of Humanities and Social Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, P.R.C. (People's Republic of China) ABSTRACT KEYWORDS This article analyses how nineteenth-century medical science apprehended the eye and its functions. It disputes Jonathan Crary’s claim of the alleged mistrust towards human vision as a source of reliable information from the 1830s onwards. It is based on the analysis of scholarly and popular scientific publications from the early 1850s to the first decades of the twentieth century, a typology of sources overlooked by Crary as well as by most of the works in the field of Visual Studies. It focuses on French documents because of the progress undertaken by medical research on the eyesight in the country at the time and the number and scope of both scientific and popular publications. In the first part, I analyse the new set of knowledge about the anatomy and physiology of the eye that physicians developed at the time – notably through the use of newly introduced instruments such as the ophthalmoscope and the ophthalmometer. In the second part, I describe how contemporary medical research led to the acknowledgment of the subjectivity of visual perceptions and the fragile nature of human visual capacities. In the last section, I show how, through a process of classification and rationalisation of the newly acquired knowledge, physicians managed to reinstate the objective character of visual perceptions on the basis of their research. Visual culture; cultural history; history of science and technology; history of medicine Introduction Vision occupies a privileged position in the emerging field of senses studies, a position corresponding, one might say, to the traditional primacy attributed to it over the other senses. The number of publications devoted to the vision since the so-called ‘sensory turn’ (Howes 2005) greatly exceeds the number of those on hearing, smell, taste, and touch (Jutte 1993, 1–16). The very existence of a discipline such as Visual Studies contributes to vision’s exceptional status. In the last few decades, many prominent scholars have called for research positioning sight in its interactions with the other senses rather than in isolation (Jutte 2000 (1993), Reinarz 2019), as well as for studies reassessing the ocularcentric character modernity (Smith 2007, 19–38). Nevertheless, the consensus around vision’s centrality in modernity has been hard to challenge (Howes 2005, 1–17). CONTACT Corinne Doria corinnedoria@cuhk.edu.cn School of Humanities and Social Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, P.R.C. (People’s Republic of China) https://sas.utmn.ru/en/people-en/https://utmn.academia.edu/CorinneDoria © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group 2 C. DORIA Most of the scholarly debates on the subject have not questioned ocularcentrism as such,1 but rather its timeline and the modalities of its triumph. The most influential narrative about the rise of vision’s centrality remains Marshall McLuhan (1962, 1964) and Walter Ong’s (1982) ‘great divide theory’ which situates the beginning of the supremacy of vision in the fifteenth century and the invention of the printing press as a pivotal event. The debates on the modalities of the predominance of the visual have typically revolved around the notion of ‘scopic regimes’. Introduced by film theorist Christian Metz in the 1970s (1975), and popularized by Martin Jay (1988), this notion refers to the conceptual coordinates of the visual space proper to a specific historical period. These coordinates were first formulated in philosophical discourses and usually correspond to artistic practices. Jay identifies three ‘scopic regimes’ that followed one another from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century: the ‘Cartesian’ regime, based on Descartes’ concept of subjective reason and embodied in the linear perspective of Italian Renaissance art; the ‘descriptive’ regime, corresponding to Huygens’s philosophy emphasizing detail and seventeenth century Dutch painting; and the ‘Baroque’ regime, philosophically manifested in Leibniz’s monadology and artistically found in the art of the CounterReformation. The notion of ‘scopic regimes’ structures most of the existing historical scholarship on the visual. Works within the social sciences and humanities have been written largely from the perspective of cultural and social history and have been profoundly influenced by two disciplinary perspectives. First: art history, which, depending on the case, provides the theoretical framework, the privileged field of inquiry, or the bulk of the primary sources. Second, the work of Michel Foucault (1963, 1975), which has popularized the dynamics of power as an inescapable lens through which one must read and interpret the practices of the gaze. Scholarly works adopting different approaches have remained relatively rare. It is also worth noticing that most of the scholarly works on vision and visuality are built on so-called ‘elitist’ sources (Smith 2007, 15), such as artworks – notably paintings – or literary descriptions produced by novelists which are hardly representative of the use and meaning of the visual for a whole society. Yet studies willing to broaden their horizon to include popular culture also have their limitations, particularly in their selection of typology and the range of their sources (Corbin 2005, 128–139). A common characteristic of the great majority of existing studies of the visual is the very limited use of medical sources. While medical sources are not completely absent in the scholarship, they rarely occupy a privileged position, and are hardly never at the center of an inquiry. This is even more surprising when we consider that the majority of historians recognize medicine – at least from the nineteenth century onwards – as the most influential frame of reference for understanding the senses (Bynum and Porter 2004). An emblematic example can be found in the work of Jonathan Crary. In his influential book Techniques of the Observer (Crary 1990), Crary argues that in the Early Modern Era, vision was considered an objective instrument for accessing the outside world. The functioning of the eye was seen as analogous to a camera obscura, an optical device in which an image is projected through a small opening onto a flat surface. According to this view, the images of external objects impressed on the retina were simply seen as objective reproductions of observed reality (Crary 1990, 27). According to Crary, at the beginning of the nineteenth century the camera obscura ceased to be the main epistemological paradigm for human vision. At that time, the embodied nature of vision – including the idea EARLY POPULAR VISUAL CULTURE 3 that sight was an unreliable sense since it was located into the imperfect and fragile human body – became central. Visual perceptions were no longer seen as accurate representations of the outside world, but as subjective reflections. Crary calls this mistrust of the vision ‘visual nihilism’. (Crary 1990, 150). He also maintains that because the eye was no longer considered capable of objective perceptions, the search for objectivity shifted toward photography and cinema. These new technologies were used to capture, fix, and reproduce the ‘realistic’ representation of the world that was no longer accessible through eyesight. Crary bases his thesis almost entirely on philosophical and artistic sources. His work only superficially considers the exceptional evolution of medical knowledge about the eye and its function that occurred the nineteenth century, nor its influence in the society. Crary’s narrative remains influential, as seen in the recent work of Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison on the origins of scientific objectivity (2007). In this renowned study, the authors analyse the evolution of scientific imagery from the 17th to the 20th century and trace a historical account of the epistemology of the representation of nature by scientists. They argue that before 1800, images of nature produced for scientific purposes did not correspond to reality. Scientists tend to produce idealized pictures of the natural world, ‘correcting’ – so to speak – the irregularities of nature. Starting from the 19th century, scientists began questioning such idealizing depictions and portraying the physical world in its irregular individuality. Human perceptive capacities being irregular in their turn, they used mechanical reproductive techniques such as photography that minimized human intervention. A third representational shift happened in the 20th century, when the scientific imagery once again lost its ‘realism’ and took the form of diagrams and graphs that needed to be interpreted by experts. Danston and Galison’s work has the merit of making more extensive use of medical sources than other historical works on visuality. However, their narrative remains situated within Crary’s interpretative paradigm, postulating the suspicion toward the reliability of human vision in the 19th century. Moreover, they fail to consider the extent of the changes that happened during the second half of the 19th century about the medical and scientific knowledge of the eye and its impact outside the scientific circles. In this article I address directly the question of the evolution of ophthalmology, and I put medical sources at the center of my enquiry, analysing the discourses on human vision published by both professional and popular scientific presses in France during the second half of the nineteenth century. The reasons why I decided to focus on France are various. First, the progress made by medical research on eyesight made French – and in particular Parisian – universities amongst the most advanced institutions in the world for the research on physiological optics. Secondly, because of the number and scope of scientific and popular publications issued in the country during the second half of the nineteenth century. In France some of the most reputed specialized journals in ophthalmology were published, such as the Annales d’oculistique and the Archives d’ophtalmologie, that offered a tribune for international research in ophthalmology. The development of the popular scientific press was also remarkable, with a variety of publications and readers which had no equal at the time. This article encompasses three sections. The first analyses the investigations of the eye and its functions that physicians began during this period using the new medical instrumentation that had become available. The second part shows how the physiological study of vision led physicians to acknowledge the subjective nature of visual perceptions 4 C. DORIA and identify its principal seat, not with the eye, but with the brain. The last part demonstrates how, through a systematic process of classification and rationalization of the newly acquired knowledge, physicians re-objectivized visual perceptions. Exploring human vision: the spectacle of discovery The nineteenth century is a pivotal moment in the history of the study of human vision. To begin with, knowledge about the eye and its physical functions increased dramatically. In 1851, Prussian physician Hermann von Helmholtz (Cahan 1994) presented to the medical community the ophthalmoscope – an instrument granted access to the interior of a living eye. Image 1 Two years later he presented the ophthalmometer. Image 2 This device allowed one to measure the degree of curvature of the crystallin and the cornea. These instruments, as well as others newly invented,2 made it possible to observe in detail both the eye’s anterior (cornea, lens, iris) and posterior pole (retina, optic nerve), leading to a substantial development in the understanding of the anatomy and physiology of the vision. This was also the period when ophthalmology became a medical specialty in its own right (Rosen 1944; Weisz 2006). Specialized hospitals and clinics opened in Europe and the United States as both teaching and research centres. Medical school-created chairs of ophthalmology3; professional associations were created4; international congresses were organized on a regular basis. These developments changed the status of ophthalmology from a technical practice carried out by surgeons or ‘oculists’ to a legitimate branch of medicine, grounded in the scientific method. During the second half of the nineteenth century, physicians turned more and more to the study of human vision.5 Advances in medical research on human vision and the parallel development of teaching institutions and medical facilities specializing in diseases of the eye resulted in a massive increase in publications on the anatomy, physiology and pathology of the visual apparatus. Articles on the new discoveries in ophthalmology started being published in greater number in medical journals; specialist publications exclusively devoted to ophthalmology began appearing and augmented rapidly in number and distribution. A shared characteristic of most of this literature was the enthusiasm and excitement for the number of new discoveries in the study of vision, as well as the pace at which they were happening. For the first time in history, physicians could observe the inner workings of the eye. In an article published in 1860, the French ophthalmologist Joseph Guérineau described almost poetically the parts of the eye now accessible for exploration: Quelle émotion, quelle surprise, quand, sous le jet lumineux qu’il renvoie, la pupille apparaît pour la première fois à nos regards, non plus noire comme auparavant, mais coloré d’une teinte rose et comme baignée de clarté ! On passe de la surprise à l’admiration, si on est assez heureux pour saisir nettement, sur le fond rose de l’œil, la papille du nerf optique, dont le disque, d’une blancheur éclatante, ressemble [. . .] à une belle lune sur un ciel calme. [What an emotion, what a surprise, when, under the luminous jet it sends back, the pupil appears for the first time to our eyes, no longer black as before, but coloured with a pink tinge and as if it was bathed in brightness! One goes from surprise to admiration, if one is EARLY POPULAR VISUAL CULTURE 5 Image 1. Helmholtz's ophthalmoscope Beschreibung eines Augen-Spiegels H. Helmholtz Published: 1851 Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images. fortunate enough to clearly grasp, against the pink background of the eye, the papilla of the optic nerve, whose disc, of a brilliant whiteness, resembles [. . .] a beautiful moon on a calm sky”. (Guérineau 1860, ix)]. The results of this diverse research appeared not only in literature for specialists but also in popular scientific journals. The nineteenth century is rightly considered the golden age of scientific popularization (Raichvarg and Jacques 1997; Bernadette and Rasmussen 1997). The number of scientific magazines for the general public increased significantly at this time. These publications intended to mediate between the 6 C. DORIA Image 2. Early ophthalmometer, in Mémoires D'Ophthalmométrie. Edited by Javal E. G Masson Editeur. Paris, France. 1890. professional world and the non-specialized public, popularizing the achievements of scientific research and discovery (La Nature 1888, 537, 1893, 10–14). In general, the articles published in these popular journals were a simplified version of the articles published by the professional presses. They were nevertheless factually accurate, and by and large, editors did not make concessions to scientific exactitude for commercial purposes. Popular audiences were seen not as passive observers of the exploits of modern science, but as central to the process of validating recent scientific discoveries. The general logic was that only in becoming accessible to the greatest number of people could scientific discoveries receive definitive recognition. Consequently, the number of articles about ophthalmology in popular presses multiplied from the 1870s onwards. Some journals even opened specific sections devoted to ophthalmology. For example, from 1875, the first year of its publication, La Science illustrée had a section called ‘Optics’ in which a wide range of topics related to eyesight were illustrated in a questions-andanswer format. Image 3 Popular ophthalmology articles from this time can be divided into three categories. First, articles that develop in-depth a major topic over several pages. For example, here can be categorized articles on the functions of the retina (La Revue des Deux Mondes 1879, 218–225), the movements of the eye (La Nature 1892, 198–199), or colour blindness (La Nature 1881, 66–70). Second, articles that provide a one-page survey on a more specific topic, such as the blind spot (La Sciences Illustrée 1888, 126–127), or the use of electromagnets in eye surgery (La Nature 1893, 30). Finally, there are short articles – one to two paragraphs in length – that describe visual phenomena, such as EARLY POPULAR VISUAL CULTURE Image 3. “La clef de la Science – Optique.” La Science Illustrée 313: 314. 7 8 C. DORIA residual images or depth perception, often proposing experiments that readers were invited to perform (La Science Illustrée 1893, 202). In terms of the topics covered, the articles on new technologies for eye examinations were among the most popular. These included detailed descriptions of the anatomical parts of the eye and often included drawings or ophthalmoscopic photographs (La Nature 1875, 274 and 1984, 163–164). Like their professional counterparts, these popular publications conveyed the same sense of wonder and fascination surrounding ophthalmology. Several articles, for instance, included long and detailed descriptions of the eye’s anatomy. Their style was to guide readers’ imagination through an exploration of a part of their own body just like travel journalism might guide one through a recently discovered exotic land. Professional as well as popular publications carried the same message: the organ of vision is now accessible to human inquiry and physicians around the globe are pioneering its exploration, discovering the hidden wonders of one of our primary senses. The subjective: the spectacle of visual perceptions Research on the physiology of vision led many to reassess the role of the eye in visual perceptions. No longer was this organ considered the primary actor in the production of visual perceptions. Instead, researchers came more and more to identify the brain as the primary actor. The study of binocular vision6 was central to this development. Binocular vision was first described scientifically in 1838 by the English scientist Charles Wheatstone, who demonstrated it through the stereoscope (Wheatstone 1838). Later, physicians recognized that the perception of depth, relief, and distance were all the result of the differences between the two images produced on the retinas of each eye. The optic nerve conveyed these images into the visual cortex of the brain where they were then merged into a single image. Hence, visual perceptions, it was concluded, were not the result of a physical or mechanical act but of a mental one. Ultimately, vision – on this new view – was a mediated subjective impression, rather than a direct and objective reproduction, of the outside world (Serre 1855; Parinaud 1896, 401–409, 1897, 161–181 and 241–271). In the first decades of the nineteenth century, Prussian physiologist Johannes Müller had already hypothesized the subjectivity of visual perceptions (Müller 1843, 739). Starting in the 1850s, research on binocular vision multiplied and produced more and more evidence of the subjective nature of visual perceptions. Image 4 The main seat of vision was then transferred from the eye to the brain. As Swiss ophthalmologist Henri Parinaud summarized: La vision binoculaire a essentiellement pour but la coopération des deux yeux à une même sensation, afin de rendre cette sensation plus parfaite, plus précise en ce qui concerne sa localisation dans l’espace. Pour cette coopération, les deux yeux sont associés cérébralement de manière à former, au point de vue fonctionnel, un organe unique. [‘Binocular vision essentially aims at the cooperation of both eyes to the same sensation, in order to make this sensation more perfect, more precise with regard to its location in space. For this cooperation, the two eyes are associated cerebrally so as to form, from a functional point of view, a single organ’ (Parinaud 1896, 242).] Research on residual and consecutive images also validated the theory of the subjective nature of vision. The first experimental studies on residual images dated back to the 1820s and the work of Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau (Verriest 1990, 9–20; Wautier, EARLY POPULAR VISUAL CULTURE 9 Image 4. Diagram of binocular vision, in “Relations fondamentales des deux yeux. La vision simultanée, binoculaire, alternante.” Annales d’oculistique 117: 161. Jonckheere, and Segers 2012, 258–278). Physicians began working in earnest on this topic in the 1860s. The main research objective of these studies was to determine whether the perception of residual images was a normal or a pathological phenomenon. Scientists concluded that the reason why individuals keep perceiving the image of an object even after the exposure to the original has ended lies in the characteristic of photoreceptors. The photochemical activity that occurs when the eyes first experience a stimulus keep transmitting visual signals to the brain even after the stimulus has been removed. As for the phenomenon of consecutive images, physicians determined that they were the result of a mental act, and in particular, an activity of the visual cortex (De Laey 2002, 915–920). Consequently, the perception of movement and speed was also a subjective experience, having no direct correspondence with the physical characteristics of an external, objective world. This discovery of the great variety of visual phenomena and the subjectivity of vision was accompanied by a sort of fascination that was expressed both in professional publications and in the popular scientific press. Articles in the professional press were enthusiastic about the discovery of the capacity for human vision to produce such a rich range of perceptions and the ease with which the eye and the brain received such sensitive impressions. The popular press expressed itself in an equally passionate tone. Articles reported the discoveries published in the medical press, emphasizing the extraordinary and ‘spectacular’ nature of human vision. Numerous articles treated the vision of relief, as well as the perception of depth, distance, movement, and speed. Suggestions for ‘practical applications’ usually accompanied the scientific explanation of these phenomena. Simple experiments such as the two pins experiment,7 or more sophisticated ones, such as the construction of the zoetrope or the anaglyphs,8 were suggested to the readers. 10 C. DORIA Another characteristic of human vision that this medical research made clear was its inherent fragility. The ability to measure visual acuity – increasingly carried out with more precise techniques (La Nature 1882, 278) – revealed the high frequency of visual disorders such as myopia, astigmatism, presbyopia, and hyperopia (Masselon 1890; Mergier 1892). The introduction of eye examinations for routine employment in fields such as the army, the railways, or the navy, revealed the high number of people suffering from colour blindness (Evariste and Moeller 1880, 8–128). The popular scientific press extensively reported the prevalence of visual defects (La Nature 1878, 94, 1881, 66–70,, 1884, 178–179; La Science Illustrée 1892, 266,, 1895, 50–52). The publication of articles demonstrating the unstable and fragile character of human vision also could have led the general public to doubt the reliability of this sense. But, as I will show in the following section, the discovery of the subjective and fragile nature of human vision did not lead to such a devaluation. Objectivation: the spectacle of the science The acknowledgment of the subjectivity of visual perceptions went hand in hand with the process of measurement, quantification, systematization, and classification undertaken by physicians. This work ultimately led to a re-objectification of human vision on the basis of medical science (Parinaud 1904, 241–270). Physicians collected a large amount of data from serial clinical observations. From this data, physicians were able to formulate new laws of visual phenomena. The language they used to convey the results of their research was the language of experimental science. As Helmholtz, one of the key scientists in this field, stated: L’art de l’expérimentation, si perfectionné par l’étude des sciences naturelles, a pu pénétrer pour la première fois dans le domaine des fonctions psychologiques. [. . .] C’est sur elle que repose le développement extraordinaire qu’a pris l’oculistique dans ces vingt dernières années, développement qui est peut-être sans exemple dans l’histoire de la médecine, à cause de sa rapidité et de son caractère éminemment scientifique. [‘The art of experimentation, so perfected by the study of natural sciences, has been able to penetrate for the first time into the field of psychological functions. [. . .] it is on it that the extraordinary development of ophthalmology in the last twenty years is based, a development that is perhaps without equivalent in the history of medicine because of its speed and eminently scientific character’. (Helmholtz 1869, 5–6)] Confronted with the diversity of visual phenomena, as well as the instability of human vision, practitioners looked for regularities and constants capable of explaining the functioning of human vision in all its variety. Medical publications detailed, for example, how the difference between the two images of the two retinas could be measured using the angle of incidence of the rays of light on the surface of each eye (Warlomont 1860, 143–144). The disparity between the apparent and real dimensions of an object could then be calculated by measuring the degree of convergence of the optical axes and the degree of curvature of the cornea. These procedures EARLY POPULAR VISUAL CULTURE 11 made it possible to establish the relations between the observer and the observed object and, consequently, demonstrate the factual correspondence between visual perceptions and the external world. Les excitations nerveuses dans notre cerveau et les représentations dans notre conscience [sont] l’image de ce qui se passe dans le monde extérieur. [Elles] représentent l’analogie des objets par l’analogie des signes, de sorte que l’enchaînement des objets extérieurs se trouve reproduit. Cette relation entre les objets extérieurs et leur représentation suffit [. . .] à notre intelligence, dans la tâche qu’elle se propose de rechercher les analogies qui existent au milieu de la diversité que présente le monde extérieur, et de les réunir pour en former des idées ou des lois [‘Nerve excitations in our brain and representations in our consciousness [are] the image of what is happening in the outside world. [They] represent the analogy of objects through the analogy of signs, so that the sequence of external objects is reproduced. This relation between external objects and their representation is sufficient [. . .] for our intelligence, in its task of seeking out the analogies that exist in the midst of the diversity that the external world presents, and of bringing them together to form ideas or laws’.] (Helmholtz 1869, 152.). To be considered reliable, visual perceptions simply had to be made constant. In contrast, the illusions of the senses were thus identifiable because they were fluctuating and unstable. “Il n’y a d’apparence trompeuse que lorsqu’on confond l’apparence normale d’un objet avec celle d’un autre [. . .] L’accord entre les perceptions visuelles et le monde extérieur repose entièrement sur la même base que toute notre connaissance du monde réel c’est-à-dire sur l’expérience constamment vérifiée des expériences nouvelles.” [“A deceptive appearance only occurs when the normal appearance of one object is mistaken for that of another [. . .] The agreement between visual perceptions and the external world is based entirely on the same basis as all our knowledge of the real world, i.e., on the constantly verified experience of new experiences.” (Helmholtz 1869, 153). The same approach characterized the studies on colour vision. The study of the physiological characteristics of the retina led to a description of the functions of its photoreceptors (cones and rods) as distinct from those of the brain in the perception of colours. Physicians were thus able to build chromatic scales for the detection of dyschromatopsia. Images 5, 6 These instruments allowed doctors to identify the different typologies of colour blindness (Donders 1880, 206–216, 1881, 109–144). The study of the refractive surfaces of the eye (cornea, crystalline lens) allowed physicians to understand the origins and frequency of conditions such as myopia, astigmatism, hyperopia, and presbyopia. Physicians established units of measurement for visual acuity (decimals or twenties), as well as for the power of optical lenses (dioptres). Images 7, 8 Ophthalmologists were thus able to determine the difference between healthy and defective vision. In short, medical science did not just produce a detailed picture of human vision in its normal and pathological state – it also provided the means to stabilize and remedy the inherent fragility and imperfection of this sense. The most common visual defects could be corrected by eyeglasses, which were more and more encouraged by doctors (Doria 2020, 5–26). Progress in eye surgery also made it possible to 12 C. DORIA Images 5. Galezowski chromatic scale, in Galezowski, X., Du diagnostic des maladies des yeux par la chromatoscopie rétinienne précédé d'une étude sur les lois physiques et physiologiques des couleurs, Paris, J.-B. Baillière et fils, 1868. EARLY POPULAR VISUAL CULTURE 13 Images 6. Galezowski chromatic scale, in Galezowski, X., Du diagnostic des maladies des yeux par la chromatoscopie rétinienne précédé d'une étude sur les lois physiques et physiologiques des couleurs, Paris, J.-B. Baillière et fils, 1868. 14 C. DORIA Image 7. Snellen Eye Chart (1862) in Snellen, Herman. Optotypi Ad Visum Determinandum. London: Williams and Norgate, 1879. successfully treat cataracts and strabismus. Physicians hence started to consider themselves as the only professionals capable of preserving sight, correcting its defects, and improving its performance. This development of vision as a reliable – albeit subjective – instrument was reflected in society as a whole. Popular scientific journals devoted numerous articles to the defects of vision, describing in detail their origin and nature, as well as the means to correct them (La Nature 1884, 178–179, 1890, 150; La Science Illustrée 1892, 266, 1895, 50–52). They presented the eye as an organ that had no secrets from modern medicine. An article published in La Nature in (1894), for instance, labelled an eye examination as a ‘quick and easy’ operation that could be performed with ‘absolute certainty’ (La Nature 1894, 163–164). Many articles also focused on eyeglasses, which they described as a reliable instrument able to correct nearly all visual defects on the condition that the physician prescribed the appropriate lenses (La Science Illustrée 1895, 50–52). The popular press also echoed these achievements of medicine, emphasizing the idea that vision was a reliable instrument for accessing external reality. The popular scientific press stressed the objective character of human vision, echoing the statements of professional ophthalmologists. This proves that the discovery of human vision’s subjective character occasioned its reification through medical science and public scientific discourse, which in turn became the guarantor of its reliability. Crary’s argument about the loss of trust in the reliability of the human vision as a consequence of the discovery of its subjectivity is not EARLY POPULAR VISUAL CULTURE 15 Image 8. Monoyer’s Eye Chart (1875) in Échelle typographique pour la détermination de l’acuité visuelle », in: Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, 80 (113), 1875. tenable as soon as it is confronted with medical sources. It is worth notice that this is not the only problematic aspect of Crary’s thesis. His claim about the ‘objective’ status of vision in the Early Modern era is also difficult to sustain. Philosophers have recognized the deceptive and fallible nature of visual perceptions since Antiquity.9 And rationalist philosophers since at least Descartes have asserted the priority of the intellect over the senses as a mean of accessing to the truth (Wilson 1997, 117–138; Atherton 1997, 139–166; Riskin 2002). Furthermore, as this article demonstrates, once we consider medical and popular medical sources about sight, it becomes evident that the studies on physical optics and artistic production that underpin Crary’s study represent only one portion of the whole discourse about this sense in the nineteenth century. Therefore, while Crary’s theory remains thought-provoking, considering non-elitist, medical and popular sources about sight allows us to have a more complete perception of how this sense was considered in the nineteenth century (Jutte 2000 (1993), 1–6, Smith 2007, 19–39). 16 C. DORIA Conclusion In this article, I demonstrate that discovering the subjective and movable nature of human vision during the second half of the nineteenth century resulted in the reassessment of the objectivity of visual perception based on medical knowledge. Physicians not only acknowledged the fragility and instability of eyesight, but while exploring and studying it they developed a scientific discourse that gave them the instruments for distinguishing normal, reliable vision from the pathological and defective. Arguments proving this point can be found abundantly in both scientific and popular publications. These sources show the consensus among the medical community on this question and a shared perception among the lay public. The claim that Jonathan Crary makes in Techniques of the Observers becomes questionable as soon as medical and scientific sources are included. It is difficult to underestimate the changes that took place in the nineteenth century in the research of vision and, more generally, in the emerging cultural place of the sense of sight. This period marks the the study of vision’s transition to modernity, both because of (1) the advances of medical science in the apprehension of the visual apparatus and its functions, and (2) the role the sense of sight acquired at the socio-cultural level. Medicine revolutionized the way in which sight was understood, and became a tool to describe, apprehend, and validate new beliefs about vision. The acknowledgement of the subjectivity and fragility of human vision did not undermine trust in this sense – as some scholars have asserted – but rather through the process of rationalization, classification, and quantification undertaken by the medical sciences reconstituted the reliability of this sense while also becoming its official keeper. These discoveries of medicine were simultaneously disseminated to the general public. The popular scientific press echoed the professional publications and contributed to building trust in the reliability of human vision and in the ability of medicine to protect and advance the functionality of the eyes. It is thus legitimate to affirm that a medicalization of the eyesight began in the nineteenth century and that this process is a crucial element for the social and cultural history of vision. Scholars who investigate the historical meaning of sight cannot exclude medical sources from their work, and must give medical discourse, both in its scholarly and popular formulation, a more significant place than the one conventionally attributed to it. Notes 1. Used for the first time by Jay 1988a, 307–326), the term ocularcentrism indicates the supremacy of the vision over the other senses in Western culture. For an overview of the academic debates on this concept refer to (Kavanagh 2004), 445–464). 2. Among others, the campimeter (an instrument to measure the visual field) invented in 1856 and the tonometer (an instrument to measure intraocular pressure) invented in 1865. 3. In Berlin, a chair of ophthalmology was created in 1866. In France, the first ophthalmology courses opened at the University of Strasbourg at the end of the 1860s; while the first chair in Paris was created in 1878. 4. The American Ophthalmological Society is founded in 1864, the Ophthalmological Society of the United Kingdom in 1883, like the Société Française d’Ophtalmologie. 5. These included the Annales d’oculistique, the first issue of which appeared in Belgium at the end of the 1830s, the Archives d’ophtalmologie, published in Paris since 1883, the Transactions of the Ophthalmological Society of the United Kingdom, 1882. In 1862 the EARLY POPULAR VISUAL CULTURE 6. 7. 8. 9. 17 American Journal of Ophthalmology was first published; and the German journals Archiv für Ophthalmologie and Klinische Monatsblätter für Augenheilkunde were created in 1854 and 1863 respectively. The expression ‘binocular vision’ indicates a mode of vision in which both eyes function simultaneously. This type of vision makes possible the visual perception of depth and distance. ‘With a pin in each hand, one looks first at one and then at the other. The first appears clear while the other appears blurred. The opposite happens when one focuses on the second pin’. ‘La clef de la science – Optique.’ (La Science illustrée, 1893), 314 The zootrope is an apparatus composed of a cylinder inside which a paper strip with a drawn figure is placed in different positions. When spun, the zootrope would produce the illusion of movement. An anaglyph consists of two superimposed images of complementary colors representing the same scene but seen from slightly different points. The image appears in relief because of the shift between the two eyes. See (Aristotle 1986).On the soul; Parva naturalia; On breath edited by Walter Stanley Hett. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Acknowledgements Special thanks go to the Deutsches Museum of Munich for supporting my investigation. I would also thank Erika Wicky and Marion Chottin for their comments and suggestions. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). Notes on contributor Corinne Doria is a lecturer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in Shenzhen. From 2019 to 2021, she taught modern history and history of medicine at the School of Advanced Studies of the University of Tyumen (Russian Federation). From 2014 to 2018 she was lecturer at Sorbonne University and Sciences-Po Paris. 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