A postscript concerning Wagner's eyestrain / by Wm. Ashton Ellis.

  • Ellis, William Ashton, 1852-1919.
Date:
[1908]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A postscript concerning Wagner's eyestrain / by Wm. Ashton Ellis. 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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    to be merely strong enough to make them data for the understanding, attain a degree of strength suffi- cient to move the will, i.e., rouse pain or pleasure— much oftener pain, though partly of a dull, vague nature; not only are single sounds and strong light felt painfully, in this condition, but even a general indefinite feeling of hypochondriacal malaise is occa- sioned.” The construction of this last sentence is none of Schopenhauer’s clearest, but that “im All- gemeinen krankhafte hypochondrische Stimmung, ohne deutlich erkannt zu werden” is really a notable anticipation, so far as it goes, of the latest etiology of obscure nerve-troubles. Moreover, after the “nega- tive” character we have already seen assigned by him to pleasure, it hardly needs the testimony of his bi- ographers,* to convince us that he was peculiarly sensitive to pain himself, like all our sufferers from astigmatism. Passing to the record of his habits, we learn that he took brisk walking exercise for two hours every afternoon, “no matter what the weather”—another astigmatic sign. “That these men lived to ripe old age,” says Gould, “that their health improved as they grew older, that when very old most of them could outwalk all the young men [Sch. certainly did]—^all this *The English reader unacquainted with German could not do better than consult Helen Zimmern’s Arthur Schopenhauer, for particulars of his life, though it was published (Longmans, Green) just thirty years ago.