Volume 1

Biographic clinics / by George M. Gould.

George M. Gould

Date:: 1903-

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Biographic clinics / by George M. Gould. Source: Wellcome Collection.

71/234 page 65

canvas the pained, exhausted look of eye-strain to be seen in all the later portraits of him, and which tells the oculist with the first glance at many patients the epitome of years of morbid ocular labor. Carlyle said the picture was of “ an idiot that had taken Glauber’s salts and lost his eyesight,” and he was disgusted in a Carlylean way. At 57 he spoke of “ half-blind eyes.” At 58 the note about “ specs ” is so vague, we cannot draw any conclusions from it. It only shows the old, old, popular folly of picking up mother’s specs or grandmother’s, when irreparable injury has been done and life nearly lived out and suffered away. “ Eye¬ sight gone a little,” at 58, tells probably of the ambly¬ opia that finally follows long lack of correction of ametropia, and “ eyes very dim even with abundant light,” at 59, emphasizes the fact, and also almost demonstrates the existence of astigmatism, which failed accommodation revealed and which no common optician’s (spherical) lenses could help. That the ametropia was not due to cataract is certain because he retained useful vision for 26 years afterward. Head¬ aches with proof-reading at 62 show the return of the reflex neurosis to the head instead of as formerly almost solely to the digestive organs. His treatment of himself—for he took no physi¬ cian’s advice but once and for a brief time—was chiefly by castor oil, which he felt obliged to take most of his life, and most copiously and constantly the

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