Who Invented the First Contact Lenses
CONTACT LENSES
Far back in the history of mankind, in 1508, Leonardo da Vinci described and drew the sketch to express his idea of a contact lens. But it was in 1827 that Sir John Hershel, an English astronomer astounded the world with his idea of making a mold of a human eye so that a lens could be made to fit perfectly. Sixty years later in 1887. F.A. Muller, a German glassblower used these ideas to create the world’s first known contact lens.
Contact lenses are full contact optical accessories which rest directly on the cornea to facilitate a better and natural vision than contemporary spectacles. Distortion due to side vision and eye-lens distance is nullified in using contact lenses. With spectacles the eye-lens distance makes the size of the objects appear bigger or smaller than actual depending upon whether you are far sighted or near sighted.
Spectacles or eye glasses block the peripheral vision due to the frame. When you look sideways, upwards or downwards, you are looking outside the perimeter of the lens which makes you look at object without the eye glasses resulting in distorted or blurred vision because you are not looking through the optic zone. This is more so because of the smaller frames in vogue today. When you wear contact lenses, irrespective of which way you look, you are always looking through the optic zone resulting in perfect vision. Contact lenses are immune to scratches and easy breakage. They are also immune to fogging and will give clear vision even on a rainy day.
Contact lenses are basically of two kinds; Soft contact lenses and RGP (rigid gas permeable) contact lenses. Both these kinds of contact lenses can be used to correct all kinds of vision i.e. myopia, hyperopia, astigmatism and presbyopia. Soft lenses are easier to wear and more comfortable while using initially, the reason why they are chosen by more than 80% users. RGP lenses are used only when you need to wear them continuously over a long period of time.
Choosing a contact lens depends upon the outcome of your optical examination by your ophthalmologist. It is always wise to inform him that you wish to use contact lenses and not spectacles, so that the ophthalmologist can test your eyes accordingly and make time to fit your contact lenses. This might be against your ophthalmologist’s preferences, as some of them do not recommend contact lenses unless you ask them especially for a set.
Wearing contact lenses is best suited to some people like sports persons, riders, acrobats etc. because they do not interfere in their professional life. Contact lenses can correct all kinds of vision as referred above. If you are in any of the above professions and prefer to wear glasses, you can wear contact lenses on the job and swap them for spectacles in your leisure time activities.
Millions of people around the world, use contact lens. It is safe and very useful tool to protect eyes. But on the other side, it requires proper cleaning. Care of contact lenses includes cleaning the storage case, since it is a potential source of infection.
Researchers always keep working to make lens cleaning a better and easier one. As part of the same attempt, two researchers Assaf Kratz, MD, and Tova Lifshitz, MD, of Soroka University Medical Center in Israel, have studied the rate of contamination in contact lens storage cases by taking samples of the contact lens disinfection solution from lens cases belonging to candidates for refractive surgery.
The most common pathogen was Pseudomonas (41.2 percent), a known cause of severe corneal infections. Fungal pathogens were found in 3.3 percent of the cases. Pathogens were found in all of the types of storage solutions that were studied; some solutions tested positive for pathogens every time they were tested among the samples. The pathogens can cause keratitis, an often painful inflammation of the cornea; complications from keratitis can lead to vision loss.
Eye Care Information
- Hard lenses — removalIn general, removal is easier than insertion. Lenses are removed, not with the fingers but with the lid margins. When you are wearing lenses your lids, on closing, slip easily over the lens to be in front of it. Indeed, for most of the time your upper lids will be covering the upper part of [...]
- Hard Lenses – insertionThe majority of patients have become wholly relaxed about putting on and removing lenses by the time they attend for the first follow-up appointment. Many, at that stage, are able to treat the matter as a joke and refer to their former anxieties with amusement or mild embarrassment. A minority, however, are still having some [...]
- Soft lenses — insertionAlthough soft lenses are considerably larger than hard lenses they are almost as easy to insert. If you can hold your lids wide enough apart, you can use the method described above for the insertion of hard lenses and you will find that the lens nestles on to your cornea with no trouble at all [...]
- Soft lenses — removalThis is very easy. Start by getting accustomed to touching the front of the lens while it is on your eye, and do this several times until you have overcome your nervousness. The lens acts as a kind of cushion so you will feel practically nothing. It is important, when you are doing this, not [...]
- Problems of post-cataract patientsSometimes the people who need contact lenses most are those who may have the greatest difficulty in inserting and removing them. This seems a good place to deal with some of the problems such people have in inserting lenses, and how these may be relieved. In the first place, a patient who has had a [...]