Is the human eye changing its form under the influence of modern education? / Edward G. Loring.

  • Loring, Edward G. (Edward Greeley), 1837-1888
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Is the human eye changing its form under the influence of modern education? / Edward G. Loring. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

    18/64 page 18
    industrial schools had he seen tlie examples of applied scienm of Germany and his own country side by side, at our laU exposition, or read the official report of tlie German Commisi sioii in regard to the utter inferiority of their work ; or liad he known that she would be the only country in Europe, whethei at peace or war, to whose interest it would not be to enter the ,( coming exposition at Paris. Nor, perhaps, would he have [, wished for the schools of Zurich had he also read the officiai 3; report of the commissioner from Switzerland in regard to theii chief industries, the watch trade of Geneva, or the silk trade 31 of Basle. .; There are indeed few countries that have made a greater oii more successful use of applied science than England. And ;= does any one suppose that all this mechanical work, with itt ^ infinity of detail and precision of adjustment, has been accoim plished without severe application of the eyes? jet the English! 5, mechanic is far freer from myopia than the German. I have been led into a comparison of these two great nationss ^] without the slightest intention or wish to exalt tlie attainments ^ of one or depreciate those of the other. ISlo one recognizes ^ more fully, or appreciates more highly than I do, the great ^ achievements of Germany, especially those in the art * we prac- tise, and more especially still, in that limited part of it, int ^ which it can be literally said that some of us here to-night live and have our being. Still, the question has arisen in ray owu mind, whether, after all, the results gained in Germany in the last half-century, or since her method of compulsory educati' -n lias been in operation, were proportionate to the tremendui;.- expenditure of force used in producing them, and whether that morbid reverence for and dependence on authoi'it}-, that accumulative and endless repetition of the oj)inions and dog- mas of others, without which no task is ever undertaken, have i . . . i not ci'amped her originality and crippled her invention. ^ Whatever has been said then has been said first, because it ^ * But, even in medicine, is not the impression gradually becoming more ■ • general, that a physician educated solely according to German methods and in German schools, is, as a rule, somewhat more learned than wise—doctior quam sa2nentm'—a little more of a doctor than a wise man ?
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3