New Studies on Fluctuations of Accommodation

Abstract

It is a curious thing to find a laboratory working on physiological optics in the Museum of Natural history! This Museum is about 350 years old and was founded under King Louis XIII for the cultivation of pharmacological plants, so that the poor people in Paris might cure themselves without paying money. Ten years after its foundation, there were already more than 3,000 different species of plants in this garden, which is still named the “Jardin des Plantes”, which means the Botanical Garden. During the French Revolution, at the end at the 19th century, some animals came from the royal gardens of Versailles and the “Jardin des Plantes” began to be also a zoological garden. Since its foundation, this garden was also a place for scientific research: zoology, botany, geology, chemistry. Now 35 laboratories are around the “Jardin des Plantes”; all deal with Natural History, and constitute the Museum.