Eyesight in relation to compensation : being a paper read in the Section of Ophthalmology at the Annual Meeting of the British Medical Association, Toronto, August, 1906 / by Freeland Fergus.

  • Fergus, A. Freeland (Andrew Freeland), 1858-1932.
Date:
[1906?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Eyesight in relation to compensation : being a paper read in the Section of Ophthalmology at the Annual Meeting of the British Medical Association, Toronto, August, 1906 / by Freeland Fergus. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Several authorities both in the United Kingdom and in various parts of the Continent of Europe have made endeavours to derive formulae with which to assess the 'v damages due for the loss or for the partial impairment of * one eye. To my mind the question can only be decided * by the observation of a large enough number of cases and the collection of sufficient data. But even when a sufficiency of observations has been made it seems to me extremely doubtful if any rule or formula can possibly be derived. Having been engaged for some years in the examination of persons suffering from injuries to the eye 1 naturally became anxious to determine what amount of injury to the eyesight prevented a man from doing ordi¬ nary work. For that purpose I began to gather together information about men possessed of only one eye and who, in many cases, were not entitled to compensation under the recent legislation on account of their having lost the eye either from disease or previous to the passing of the recent enactments. The statements which are made in the witness-box are often wild in the extreme. Quite recently in a case in one of the Scottish courts, two of the medical witnesses /or the injured man stated that it was quite impossible for a man • with only one eye to wheel a barrow, and oddly enough the judge took that as being an ascertained fact. Any one who tries will find that it is quite easy to wheel a barrow • along a plank with one eye shut; the evidence was totally • erroneous. Another statement which is often made is * that after the loss of an eye a patient is unable to wield a * hammer with useful accuracy because it is said that his *• intuitive perception of the third dimension of space is * destroyed. As a matter of fact, if a person shuts an eye * and uses only one, he will find that he can handle a • hammer practically as well in that condition as with both * eyes. The question here is not the distances of several points relatively to each other, it is chiefly a matter of alignment and of the absolute distance of the object to be struck from the person who intends to strike it. For the purposes of this paper I have taken 20 cases from • my own clinic, and these show that men are often able to * work at the most difficult and hazardous occupations with • only one eye, or with defective vision in both. The first * two are so exceptional that I wish to give them special prominence. 1. J. McE., aged 30, has been employed all his life as a 4 collier. During the last three years he has been engaged in the same pit as a holer. In both eyes there is marked retinitis pigmentosa, which is tolerably far advanced. With either eye he can count fingers at a foot, but not beyond that distance. He savs that the wages he has earned have been nearly the same as those made by other men in the same part of the pit, although perhaps he has been a little under the average. 2. The second case is also one of retinitis pigmentosa. I last * saw this patient on July 14th, 1905, but had, on account of his malady, seen him from time to time for some years preceding. During my attendance on him I extracted a cataract from his left eye. On the day before mentioned I found an incipient cataract in the right eye, which diminished its vision to Vo °f