James Wardrup, in the 1834 edition of his landmark work, The Morbid Anatomy of the Human Eye , (Wardrup 1834) published an abbreviated English translation of a 1799 German case report. This report may be the first documented use of an optical device during an eye procedure.

The author, D. ( Wilhelm August Gottlieb ) Manniske from ( Bad ) Frankenhausen, described the surgical removal of a buried corneal foreign body (the wing cover of a beetle), which had produced a granuloma in the superficial cornea. Using a “small hand microscope” he saw the black foreign body in the depths of his initial incision. Although Manniske did not describe his device, a modern ophthalmologist, J. Fraser Muirhead, has inspected various candidates and feels it was most likely either a simple lens or a “botanic microscope,” with the specimen holder removed and the optical part reversed.

Submitted by J. Fraser Muirhead, from the Cogan Ophthalmic History Society