Eyestrain and the literary life : read before the Canadian Medical Association, August 25th, 1903 / by George M. Gould.

  • Gould, George Milbrey, 1848-1922.
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Eyestrain and the literary life : read before the Canadian Medical Association, August 25th, 1903 / by George M. Gould. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    they were essentially physically sound, and that their ailment was truly functional. The demand and ability to cirry out life-long physi- cal exercise also points to an overplus of nerve force and an undeniable necessity of draining the surplus innervation to the large muscles of the body. But it also points more surely and clearly to the fact that onlj'^ by this means could the eyes be rested and the source of redex irritation shut off. That, or something like it, appears the plain philosophy of the “ nervousness ” of eyestrain sufferens, and their absorbing need of physi- cal activity. The greater number of literary men and intellectual work- ers show no such uncontrolled necessity, because these have no eyestrain. VN'henever one has such patients, or reads of such men being great walk- ers, look out for eyestrain. Truant schoolboys are to be studied from the same standpoint. When 50 percent, of epileptics have unsymmetric astigmatism, it is suggestive of a possible ocular origin of their disease, even though when epilepsy is fully established and extreme, it may not be curable by glasses. When young criminals are found to have an enormously high average of high hyperopia,—such as would absolutely interdict study and handwork—what can they do, if poor and naturally unmoral, what can they do but drift into crime ? Apathy and Exhaustion seem at first sight utterly at variance with a synchronous exhibition in the same patient of nervousness and an im- pulse, not to be disobeyed, towards activity. In Whittier the exhaustion, anemia, and apathy, were more pronounced than in any of the others. In Darwin the psychic fatigue and depression co-existed with the spurred and jaded body. In Wagner and Mrs. Carlyle it came to a feverish co- existence and alternation of exhaustion and activity, both morbid. In the others it phased itself in varying degrees of predominence and alter- nation. The intense melancholy and depression of. Carlyle, Whittier, Darwin, Wagner, etc., and of most “ dyspeptics ” is proverbial, and has even provoked many absurd pathologic sa3dngs, themselves pathologic such as “ Genius breeds upon a dyspeptic soil,” etc. One hea; trending result of their exhaustion was the desire or fear of death, or of w’^orse than death, insanity. Darwin was always on the edge of despair and at one time in middle life made his will in view, as he thought, of approaching death. Carljde often shuddered at the ap- parent uselessness and fatigue of life, and the advisability of death. Wagner was constantly tempted to suicide, and at one time seems to have resolved upon it. Whittier, Nietzsche, Wagner, all were convinced, in youth or niid-age, that their lives had been lived out, and that nothing was left to do, at least no ability to do it. The peculiar nature of eye strain, the rapidity with which it produces morbid reflexes, and is
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