REC ANTIQUES 51 RE TOOTH RING REVISITED
From: Andy Dingley (dingbat@no-spam)
Subject: Re: Tooth/ring revisited...
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 12:17:22 +0100


On Mon, 14 Jul 2003 06:54:08 -0400, "Janice Hudnall"
<jhudnall@no-spam> wrote:

>OK- does anyone know where the 1816 Newton tooth currently resides?

Newton's health was famously good, in an age of plagues, and his eulogy contains the phrase, "He never made use of spectacles, nor lost any more than one single tooth during his whole life ".

This is interesting, because of Newton's invention of optometry. He was one of the first to grind lenses _for_ spectacles, rather than picking and choosing from ready-made lenses. His advances in the theory of optics allowed the lenses to be designed according to the degree of vision deficit measured in the patient.

So not only might it be a Newton tooth, it might be the _only_ Newton tooth ! 8-)

I was in Florence a couple of weeks ago. Saw this:
http://galileo.imss.firenze.it/museo/4/eiv10.html