The Eyeseum
Optometrists typically don’t hear their patients say, “I arrived early for my appointment so I could spend more time in your waiting room.” That is, unless you’re Andrew Miller (OD’87).
The waiting room in Dr. Miller’s thriving Virginia Beach practice is a bona fide museum – or “Eyeseum” as he calls it – containing scores of optometric artifacts, ranging from rare relics (an eyeglass case from the 1600s with a carved depiction of Pocahontas), to bizarre quackery devices (the Actina Eye Restorer - more on this later). What’s on display is only the tip of the iceberg, however. Dr. Miller keeps a great deal of this collection at home, simply because there is not enough space in the waiting room. “I rotate artifacts in and out to keep it interesting,” he says.
There’s not a clear favorite showpiece among patients, although old glasses, cases, and medications are quite popular. “Every day, patients come in and say, ‘This one is my favorite,’ and it’s always something different,” says Dr. Miller.
Dr. Miller’s personal favorites include several unique, local Virginia items, as well as a 1691 German prayer book with a hidden recess in the back cover to hold a pair of reading glasses.
He is particularly fascinated by medical device quackery. From his perspective as a collector, the quackery business reached its heyday in the mid- to late 1800s, lasting through the early 1900s.
I like the quackery and the curiosity section the most. People didn’t fully understand how the eye worked at the time and it was very easy to deceive them.
One of Dr. Miller’s favorite scam devices is the previously mentioned Actina Eye Restorer, which claimed to use a galvanic and ozone battery to produce electricity to cure cataracts, astigmatism, iritis, blindness, and more. Spoiler alert: It did not cure any of these ailments.
“Electricity was brand new at the time, and people thought there could be therapeutic benefits to it,” explains Dr. Miller.
Dr. Miller acquired an Actina from the estate of a retired New York Railway worker who ran a medical quackery museum. The Actina, manufactured by the New York and London Electric Association, was patented in the U.S. in 1886. When asked what Actina meant, the manufacturer replied, “The life giver!” In addition to a $10 price tag (pricey for the time), the device had to be sent back to the manufacturer every six months to be “recharged” for $1.
The Actina is three and a half inches tall. According to Dr. Miller, it is “wrapped with a spiral strip of embossed copper with screw toppers on either end and an absorbing material stuffed in the center, which would allow it to be filled with a mixture of oil of mustard (48%), oil of sassafras (25%), belladonna extract (12%), ether (12%), and amyl nitrate (3%).” Needless to say, the device was described as having a “wretched” smell. Patients were advised to place one end of the device against the eye until they felt a “decided smarting sensation” and then turn the device around and take “as deep an inhalation as possible” up to a dozen times per day.
More than 100,000 Actinas were sold between 1885 and 1915 in the U.S. and England. Eventually, the journalist Samuel Hopkins Adams exposed Actina as a fraud in a series of Collier’s Weekly articles.
We don’t see as many quackery devices like the Actina today, thanks to federal laws.
The reason that medical device quackery was so outrageous from about 1850 to 1938 was because there were no laws against claiming things that weren’t true.
“People could sell a medication or device and say that it cured diseases, and there were no repercussions if the claims were false. With the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906, Congress decided that any medications on the market had to accurately list ingredients. This helped get rid of the ‘snake oils’ but still didn’t stop people from peddling devices like the Actina because they weren’t under the auspices of drug laws. The government agency that made progress next in the fight against quackery devices turned out to be the U.S. Postal Service, which could penalize sellers for mail fraud for making misleading claims for products sold through the mail. Everything truly changed in 1931 when the Food and Drug Administration [FDA] was established, and in 1938, the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act finally gave them the power to police and remove therapeutic devices from the market that weren’t producing the results they claimed.”
Dr. Miller keeps his collection (and knowledge of what’s out there) up-to-date through his membership in the Ophthalmic Antiques International Collectors’ Club, which is based in the U.K. Through this group, as well as networks in the U.S., Dr. Miller keeps an eye out for unique items to acquire.
Dr. Miller grew up in the Cleveland area, specifically Shaker Heights and Mayfield Heights. After earning an undergraduate degree in psychology at Ohio State, he stayed in Columbus to earn his optometry degree, graduating in 1987. Soon after graduation, he moved to Virginia Beach, eventually buying his own practice and raising triplets (now grown). Although he always has been interested in the history of optometry, his Eyeseum truly took off about 10 years ago.
Learn more about Dr. Miller’s impressive collection at eyeseum.us, and feel free to contact him with device questions and leads at andrew.miller@verizon.net.
