Glass artificial eyes, 1875-1900
Inv V08802

During the American Civil War many soldiers lost the sight of one or both eyes due to the impact of shrapnel or gunpowder.
The most suitable treatment in these kinds of cases was the removal of the affected eye, since otherwise it was likely to become infected, thus endangering the patient’s life.
In this way, in the years immediately following the Civil War there emerged a new trade, that of glass eye seller. These travelling salesmen went from house to house with a box full of glass eyes and sold their products, after long comparison of the remaining eye with the items in the stock box. It is of course striking that the glass eye is not an exact imitation of an eye, but only of part of it. The reason was that the space of the eye socket filled with scar tissue, so that there was room only for a flattened glass model, with iris and pupil.