On cases of accident to shipping and on railways due to defects of sight / by E. Nettleship.

  • Edward Nettleship
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: On cases of accident to shipping and on railways due to defects of sight / by E. Nettleship. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    the Board of Trade, by the important ship owners and by the railway companies has resulted not only in the detec- tion and consequent exclusion of many candidates found to have disqualifying visual defects, but that the know- ledge that such tests had to be passed has also often prevented those who knew themselves to be defective from applying for admission. Many myopic lads have myopic relatives, and such families, knowing that short-sightedness often increases in degree and therefore becomes more disqualifying with age, will tend to choose occupations for which long sight is not essential. A very large number of colour-blind lads have one or more colour-blind brothers, a fact that sometimes deters them, although if one member of such a family succeeds in passing the examination we not infrequently find that the others apply too. I know of cases in which pairs of colour-blind brothers hold marine certificates or have passed for com- missions in the Army. It should also be added that, so far as we know at present, colour-blindness appears to have caused more accidents than defective form-vision,* but no conclusion of any value can be reached as to this point or as to the total frequency of accidents from visual defects of all kinds, until examination of the sight is made compulsory after accidents. It appears to be the case that in the accidents hitherto proved to have been caused by bad form-vision the pilot has been the one to blame (Cases 12, 13 and 17, and probably Case 11); and in this connection I may say that I have quite recently seen an elderly pilot with considerable myopia and form-vision quite below the standard, who was referred for special examination to the Board of Trade. As to the kind of signal that has been mistaken, it has almost always been a lamp at night, but in Case 9 the accident occurred by daylight with a buoy, and in Case 20 mention is made of difficulties in the interpretation of buoys. * See also a letter from Mr. John Glynn in The Times for May 7th, 1913, in which the writer states that no single accident can be traced to faulty form-vision on the part of an officer. [A pilot is not, technically, an officer.—E.N.]