Patent Parabola Spectacles…affording altogether the best artificial Help to the Human Vision… [opening lines of broadsheet]

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Stunning 1860 broadsheet circular printed in two colors advertising eyeglasses with “concavo-convex ellipsis” lenses patented by Edward Bohrek of Philadelphia.

Advantages of these lenses were derived from their parabolic form; Bohrek’s Parabola Spectacles transmitted rays of light:

...without unequal refraction or the blur consequent on the reflection from the minute cavities found in the most finished surfaces of other lenses; and it is this perfect transmission of light joined to their peculiar form, that enables the wearer of the Parabola Spectacles to prosecute the most trying labors of the eye without those distressing results which follow from the use of all other glasses.

The text includes “Hints for the Selecting of Glasses” and various testimonials. Lists of others who provided testimonials to Bohrek include medical and surgical professors and a number of prominent Philadelphians including artists Thomas Sully (1783–1872) and Rembrandt Peale (1778–1860) and popular cookbook and household management author Eliza Leslie (1787–1858).

At the bottom of the recto, a note boldly proclaims that Bohrek’s “Parabola Spectacles are not sold by Peddlars.”

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