Eyesight, and how to care for it / edited by George Black.

Date:
[1888]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Eyesight, and how to care for it / edited by George Black. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    118/168 (page 114)
    The quality of type is to be considered as well as the size, for print of fairly good size is often very trying to the eyes, because blurred and indistinct. The quality of the paper, and of the ink, too, has its influence on the general effect. Bright white paper, particularly if its surface is glazed, is dazzling and irritating. It is on account of the quality, rather than the size, that it is that one type is often found a great deal plcasanter to read than another. Some cheap publications manage to combine all of the defects referred to in such a degree that a more paternal government than ours might well suppress them as enemies to society. Fortunately, such pub- lications do not contain intellectual treasures that it need tempt one to risk his eyes to reach. As the eyes must be moved, in reading, to bring the image of each word in succession upon the yellow spot of the retina, if the page is very wide, the ex- ternal muscles of the eyeball are fatigued by follow- ing the long lines, and it is better to divide such pages into double column. The whole aim and object of the eye, with all its complicated anatomical, physiological, and optical apparatus, is to receive the impressions conveyed by light; and it is hardly necessary to urge the impor- tance of considering the amount and kind and direc- tion of the light in which and by which it must do its work. Though it is, of course, possible to use too