Color blindness : remarks / by B. Joy Jeffries at the twenty-ninth annual meeting of the board of the supervising inspectors of steam vessels.

  • Jeffries, B. Joy, 1853-
Date:
[1881]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Color blindness : remarks / by B. Joy Jeffries at the twenty-ninth annual meeting of the board of the supervising inspectors of steam vessels. 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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    color-blindness, and whether it was dangerous, &c. As I said, any de- gree of color-blindness would very readily pass undetected by them; the most dangerous cases, namely, the partial or incomplete, would most surely escape and be declared perfectly safe. This, too, by the most honest inspector, uninfluenced by surrounding pressure, from which, reports show, none are free. The same sort of pressure that was applied to this board was brought to bear on the Board of Health of the State of Connecticut, to which, from lack of personal acquaintance with the subject, they also yielded. They allowed defective employes to be tested by what they themselves Md their counsel demanded, namely, flags and lanterns at eighty rods. The results from the worsted test were, however, entirely substan- tiated by these second examinations, an account of which will be given you by Dr. W. H. Oarmalt, professor of ophthalmology at Yale Uni- versity, and who was one of the examiners under the State laws. [Since the meeting of the board, full reports, &c., have appeared, from which the following are quoted as of special interest:] Dr. Chamberlain, secretary of the Connecticut State Board of Health, reports in the Boston Medical and SurgicalJournal of February 3,1881, as follows: ''It so happened, however, that, at the outset of the examinations, several engineers, closely connected with the principal officers of one of the most influential roads, were found more or less defective, and others, of greater or less influence pohtically, were involved. A special appeal, signed by 6,000 or more, including nearly, if not all, railroad presidents and prominent officials, as well as by leading politicians, was presented to the board of health, asking that the methods of ex- amination be entirely changed, and practical tests only employed, such as the flags and lanterns used in signalling. The great cry was that the men be tested by the tools with which they worked, by practical tests— as if those were not practical which ascertained the facts surely, and with the greatest ease and rapidity. In deference to these representa- tions, however, those condemned by the worsted system were allowed a further trial hj flags and lanterns, at eighty rods. The results of this were somewhat surprising to the men. Out of twenty-four men exam- ined by Dr. Bacon, and found color-blind by the worsteds, twenty-one failed by flags and lanterns, and the others answered more or less un- satisfactorily. Similar results were obtained by Professor Carmalt, the other examiner. From the Eeport of the Connecticut State Board of Health are taken the following: Extracts from the Eeport of Br. W. T. Bacon, Examining Ophthalmic Surgeon. '' The whole number examined was 1,029. Of these 4.6 per cent, had color defects and 7.5 per cent, had visual defects. ''Those failing to show satisfactory color perception by the tests enumerated were tried with the flags and lanterns at eighty rods, one or both, in use on the road. Of the twenty-five color-blind to red or green, twenty-four appealed to the flags, and twenty-one of these failed in •distinguishing red from green, while three named the colors correctly. In testing with the flags, one of the officers of the road was alwaj^s