The Cheyenne daily leader. [volume] (Cheyenne, Wyo.) 1870-1884, 1878-04-10

MYoPIA.

A New York ucpiist maintains that the
world is becoming shostsiGhted that my.
opia. as il is technically called Is developed
by education and especially by reading
that the disease or defect Is partially here
ditnry. and that as education spreads, the
inclination to s~hortsightedness must spread
also. until it may become nearly or quite
universal among the cultivated ciasses OF
Western mankind. He endeavors to prove
his proposition by quantities of American
statistics. which seem TO show hat defect
i've sight increases in the precise ratio OF
study, and by quoting me often-repeated
fact in some universities in Germany, the
average of "myopis" rises with age. till
at twenty-one there are twice or three
times rs many near sighted lads as boys
with normal eyes, and finally alarms him.
self and his readers till he and they half
doubt whether cultivation is not being
purchased at too high n price What is
the use of knowing so much if you are to
he purblind Z We confess we think his
views somewhat exaggerated. Knowing,
as we do, that out of half Il dozen chil-
dren in n family, one or two will be
nearsigLted aud the rest enjoy normal
sight; that short sight sometimes appears
like an epidemic among the children OF
long sighted parents. and that ncar-sighted
parents frequently have far sighted chill
drcn. we own to n distrust of the theory OF
her6dity, all the greater because the per.
mauent tendency in all animals toward
reyersion to the normal type would end to
e~xtnguish a mere disease or aIlur OF
normal power. We know that the Chinese
habit Of spelling the foot has not injured
the feet OF any new born baby, and that
the Jewish and Arabian practice of circum.
cision, though continued for 5000 years,
has produced no change of structure, and
doubt, Therefore, If the too great conyexity
of the eye, if produced artiicially, 1,
certainly transmissible from one genera.
ton to another. The evidence too. as to
the effect Of education is a little dubious.
Thousands Of students are keen-eyed. The
proportion of outdoor laborers suffering
under the defect is considerable, though
concealed by their habit of refusing spec.
tacles and we have no proof that savage
races are exempt from the disease, the
only tribes carefully examined being At
once few in number, and dependent for
food upon their cultivation of the sense OF
sight. In their case 1t would be necessary
to inquire not only into the number of nor.
NAL eyes among them, but into the number
of abnormal eyes in the direction of long.
sightedness, the incessant effort to see at
long ranges improving all sight--red Indians,
for instance, see footprints in grass which
are quite Invisible 10 CIVILIZED whlte men.
The short-sighted savage may see rs far ms
the doctor who examines him, without having
his own normal sight. Nor do we quite un.
derstand why, if the eye is made convex by
attention to books, it does not go on getting
more convex by still more attention to
them or how it is possible, us occasionally
happens, that students Of fifty, after forty
years passed in reading, more or less,
should find their eyes so strengthened that
they oan dispense with glasses. We incline
rather to n notion which underlies DIR.
Liebriech's inventions in the way Of desks
that the position of the frame in referenc.
to the object studied has as much to dc
with myopia is the use of the eye, and
that the disease, if hereditary is only so as
a hereditary tendency liable to evaporation.
Nevertheless. whatever the precise cause,
it is impossible to doubt that pear.sighted.
ness is becoming much more common
London Spectator.