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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    20. S. M., aged 23, ironstone drawer. Some years ago this patient’s left eye was removed for injuries due to the kick of a horse. The vision of the remaining eye is f Snellen. He has often to use a hammer in breaking up lumps, and has never experienced any difficulty in so doing ; his earning power has not been diminished by the accident. Such examples might be multiplied indefinitely; they open up a wide field for speculative thought, into which I do not mean to enter. There are, however, one or two practical aspects of the question which may properly receive some attention here. And first it is to be noted that a good deal is likely to depend on what may be called the patient’s resource. No one would be justified in certifying, for example, that the men suffering from retinitis pigmentosa were fit to work at the face of a coal pit. Yet here they are both actively engaged below ground. This factor varies considerably in different individuals, and is a thing which cannot be expressed by any formula. Consequently, any attempt to establish a definite relation between a person’s wage earning capacity and his eyesight seems to me to be hopelessly futile. I know of one blind man who can get about the streets with very great ease, and another who can scarcely find his way to a house round the corner of the street from his own door. Indi¬ vidual differences in this element are probably very great. Another element equally impossible of evaluation is the injured man’s truthfulness. The only means which we have of measuring a person’s visual acuteness is by letters, or by other objects of known size. But when a patient is placed in front of letters which gradually diminish in size we have no means of testing whether the smallest letters which he reads are the smallest which he sees. He may only read while all the time his vision is f. There is obviously a great temptation placed before frail humanity if the worse the vision the greater the compensation. Frequently a witness goes into the box and states on oath that the vision of the injured man is, say, What he really should say is that at the examination the patient read letters of but as to whether that is his best or not he (the witness) is entirely ignorant—unless, indeed, when he has during the examination found something which would account for such a diminution of the acuteness, Here, therefore, we have another factor which must falsify any formula which attempts to express a relation between wage earning capacity and the form sense. Lastly, and most important of all, there are many kinds of employment in which the form sense does not seem to play any appreciable part; several of the cases just described are excellent examples of this. To these we may add all persons who have an excessively high degree of myopia. One instance will suffice to illustrate my meaning, and will recall to every ophthalmic surgeon’s memory similar cases which he has seen in his practice. A young man had worked for several years in a coal pit. He thought he would try to get employment above ground,