The Ideal Sight Restorer

The Ice Box Archive Team is currently parsing through a collection of Harper's Weekly magazines from 1860-1910. A turn of the century advertisement in Harper's Weekly boasts about this eye remedy.

The Ideal Sight Restorer [advertisement pictured to the right] was "the inestimable blessing of sight. Nothing more useful or suitable for a present."

The Museum of Vision in San Francisco, California, has in its collection the Ideal Sight Restorer and offers an interesting background into the device and its creator:

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"Professor" Charles Tyrell invented the Ideal Sight Restorer. Tyrell was a masseur who obtained a medical degree at the age of 57 from the New York Eclectic Medical College. He had a private practice and two mail order concerns, one being The Ideal Company which manufactured his sight restoring device using suction to increase blood flow and reshape the cornea. On several occasions, the American Medical Association investigated the Ideal Sight Restorer and its inventor, "Professor" Charles A. Tyrell, proclaiming the device to be "pseudomedical claptrap." In 1915, the Ideal Company moved to England and renamed itself the Neu-Vita Hygenic Institute to avoid prosecution.

- Image and summary courtesy of Museum of Vision

Wall Street Transportation, 1853

Wall Street Ferry Terminal
While landfill may conjure thoughts of a certain neighboring state to the west, landfill was also a major component to lower Manhattan's development and subsequent transportation.

Wall Street was once the location of a physical wall during the Dutch occupation in the 1660s, terminated near the water's edge--today's Pearl Street. Since the 1660s, landfill has expanded lower Manhattan into the surrounding waterways.

Old docks, ship ballast and earth from construction progressively pushed lower Manhattan's east side from Pearl to Front to Water and finally to South Street. By the 1850s, three additional artificial Wall Street blocks had been added, extending a street that contains some of the most valuable real estate in the world.

A precursor to today's Water Taxi and New York Waterway ferries, the ferry service at the east end of Wall Street in the 1850s [pictured above] transported passengers to and from a Manhattan that was still three decades away from the Brooklyn Bridge, or downtown's first fixed link to the outside world.

Searching for the Oldest Item in the Collection

On Tuesday, the ice box team came across The London Chronicle, or Universal Evening Post, No. 103, for Thursday, August 25 to Saturday, August 27, 1757.

Wikipedia Summary:
The London Chronicle was an early family newspaper of Georgian London. It appeared three times a week and contained world and national news, and coverage of artistic, literary, and theatrical events in the capital. A typical issue was eight pages.

Originally titled 'The London Chronicle: or, Universal Evening Post' it first ran from 1757 to June 1765. It was continued by The London Chronicle which appeared in 113 volumes from July 2, 1765 to April 23, 1823. It was then absorbed by the Commercial chronicle and continued in its original title (London chronicle: or, Universal evening post). In 1823 it was absorbed into the London Packet.

At issue No. 103, this London Chronicle was less than a year into publication.

the ice box archive goes live

This blog will detail interesting finds inside the Wall Street ice box.