Lectures on diseases of the eye / by Charles Bell Taylor.

  • Bell Taylor
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on diseases of the eye / by Charles Bell Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    97/106 page 93
    98 is one of the gravest affections of the eye, caj)able of limitation by constant care during childhood and youth; but if not thus limited, likely to be a source of future disability and misery, and to be handed doivn as an onerous inheritance to children. Surely that is a serious disease ! Let me epitomise for your guidance a few facts relative to this very important subject. If short sight is not developed before sixteen years of age, it will not be developed at all; if it has not reached a higher grade than one-tenth by twenty, it is not likely (if care be taken) to increase. Higher degrees than this are an ever-present source of danger, disability, and frequent disaster. It is more likely to be developed in weakly children than in others, and frequently makes rapid progress in those who are recovering from illness. It is unknown among savage tribes and tillers of the soil, and is the direct result of a vicious system of excessive education, making its appearance first in the children of village schools in the pro- portion of about one per cent.; in schools of higher grade, twenty per cent.; higher still, forty per cent.; and the atten- tion of the German Parhament has recently been called to the fact that in some districts where compulsory education has been longest in force, upwards of fifty per cent, of the inhabit- ants are affected. Not only is the numerical ratio raised, but the intensity of the disease is also increased in direct proportion to the hours spent in study. With regard to treatment, again I say, prevention is better than cure; better indeed in this case, for cure is impossible. I see many of my eminent col- leagues suggest desks, and fittings, and light arrangements, and props to keep the children's heads in certain positions; but to my mind, desks and props and fittings do not meet the difficulties of the case. From five to fifteen is the dangerous
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