# The Theory and Practice of Handwriting/Appendix 3

APPENDIX III
Mr. Adams Frost examined a Board School in London and found therein among 267 scholars, 73, or 27.3 per cent, with sub-normal vision.
The (Philadelphia) Report explains that while some of the classes in the primary and secondary schools had had hygienic surroundings and in the grammar schools the arrangements were not of the best, in the normal schools the greatest possible care had been given to the lighting and seating of the classrooms with the result of making them as nearly perfect as possible in the present state of our knowledge of the requirements. Yet in spite of this and of the fact that the pupils were much older and therefore less susceptible to unfavourable circumstances “The showing for myopic eyes was almost as bad as in the lower schools.”
(R. Brudenell Carter F. R. C. S., Ophthalmic Surgeon to St. George’s Hospital–Medical Times and Gazette, April 25 and May 2, 1885.)
Shortsightedness is developed almost exclusively during School-life; rarely afterwards and very rarely before that time. Is this coincidence of time accidental?–i. e. does the shortsightedness arise at the period about which children go to school? or has school-life caused the shortsightedness? Statistical enquiries prove the latter to be the case.
The well-known orthopædic surgeon Eulenburg also states that 90 per cent of curvatures of the spine which do not arise from a special disease are developed during school-life.
These statements have particularly struck me as coinciding exactly with the period of the development of shortsightedness and I have paid the more attention to this relation between spinal curvature and shortsightedness as they seem to form a circulus vitiosus in so far as shortsightedness produces spinal curvature, and curvature favours shortsightedness.
​The frequency of the so-called scoliosis or lateral curvature of the spine has its principal origin in the position in which the children sit during their school time especially while writing.
But what now is the normal posture? The upper part of the body is to be kept straight, the vertebral column neither twisted to the right nor to the left; the shoulder-blades both of the same height, are, together with the upper arm, freely suspended on the ribs, and in no way supporting the body; both elbows on a level with each other and almost perpendicular under the shoulder-joint without any support; only the hands and part of the forearms resting on the table; the weight of the head freely balanced on the vertebral column and not on any account bent forward, but only turned so much round its horizontal axis, that the face is inclined sufficiently to prevent the angle at which the eye is fixed on the book from being too pointed.
(Dr. R. Leibrich, Consulting Ophthalmic Surgeon to St. Thomas' Hospital.)
The twisted and curved position of the spine caused by writing is doubtless a very potent factor in the production of Lateral Curvature. The more slanting the writing the worse the position, and I would strongly advise that upright writing be universally substituted for the slanting (p. 73).
The posture necessitated by ordinary writing is probably that which causes more harm to the spine than any other, but the system of upright writing so ably advocated by Mr. Jackson is calculated to reduce this harm to a minimum. I have referred to this subject in another part of this volume but I take this opportunity of advising the reader to obtain Mr. Jackson's publications upon this system of upright writing with which I have become acquainted only since urging the advantages of substituting upright for slanting writing in the Second Edition of this book.
(Curvatures of the Spine by Noble Smith, F.R.C.S. Ed., L.R.C.P. Lond., &c. Third Edition, pp. 73 and 108.)