Eyesight in schools : a paper read before the Association of Medical Officers of Schools, on April 15th, 1885 / by R. Brudenell Carter.

  • Robert Brudenell Carter
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Eyesight in schools : a paper read before the Association of Medical Officers of Schools, on April 15th, 1885 / by R. Brudenell Carter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

    19/34 page 21
    insufficiency of the recti interni at once made plain the reason for the apparent discrepancy. The ophthal- moscopic record, by coming last, not only served to check the results of the subjective examination, but in the light of the preceding record the observer was less liable to be led into error by the active accommoda- tion of the patient. The whole number of eyes examined by the Com- mittee was 2,422, to which must be added 174 exa- mined in the same manner and recorded on the same blanks by Dr. Jackson, of West Chester, making in all 2,596. The average time required and actually spent upon each case was twenty-eight minutes, and the record thus obtained was as complete and free from all sources of error as was possible from a single examination, unless a mydriatic were employed ; so that, upon it, writes Dr. Risley, I should not have hesitated to venture an opinion or to prescribe treat- ment, had that been the object of the diagnosis. The results obtained from the examinations above described are of very high importance. When Cohn commenced his work, he was, as I have already said, chiefly impressed with the prevalence of myopia ; and the amount of either hypermetropia or of astigmatism which he detected was insignificant ; the two together amounting to less than a fourth of the cases of myopia, and the remaining children being described as emme- tropic. It follows that, as the myopia increased from year to year, and as it exceeded by four times the other forms of ametropia, it must have been recruited from the emmetropia, and Cohn's inference was, be- yond all question, that sound and well-formed eyes, if subjected to the conditions of school work which he found prevailing, were in danger of becoming myopic. Why it was that, under similar conditions, some suffered while others escaped, he did not make any attempt to explain. When his researches were re- peated in other places, and by other observers, this noticeable difference in results became apparent, that hypermetropia was more commonly discovered ; and the more carefully the examinations were conducted, the more frequent the hypermetropia became. Thus Erismann, at St. Petersburgh, dividing his children into eight classes, of which the youngest stands first, found, in this first class, 136 per cent, of myopia, 18*6
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3