Arizona weekly journal-miner., 1898-01-26
THE WORLDS BLIND.

Curious Facts About the sIEhtIess and the
 Care Taken of Them In Various EAnds-
 A paragraph is travelling about to the effect that the worlds blind are
 computed to number 1000, O00- about one sightless person to every 1,5OO inhabitants, If the proportion of sightless persons were the same in every country, or substantially so, it would be easier to conclude that blindness is due to causes which
 neither skill nor foresight can pre- vent. But the truth of the matter, as has been pointed out by a distin- guished German oculist, is that the great majority of cases of blindness are due to fever, and the same au- thorities declare that 75 per cent of the afflicted persons could have re tained their sight had they been properly treated.
 Some figures in corroboration of this are supplied by the official sta tistics of both England and France. By the last reports there were 23, 900 sightless persons in England, the average being S7O for each 1000, 900 inhabitants The percentage of blind persons among infants of less than 5 years was 166 for each 1000, 000; between and 15 it rose to 2ss; between 20 and 25 to 422; between 45 and 60 to 1895, and above 6 years of age 1000 for each 1000, 900 inhabitants. Similarly in France the official figures show that only one-sixth of the sightless were born blind, and five-sixths became blind through illness or accident The French official figures further show that of those born blind 65 per cent were male and only S5 per cent female children. Another curious result shown by the figures Is found in the fact that while the number oi blind male and blind female adults was substantially the same, the number of sightless married men in France is double the mum Der of sightless married women. Less than 10 per cent of the total num- Der of sightless persons in France by the last report were under the age of 21.
 Russia a1.d Egypt are the two countries in which blind persons constitute the largest proportionate number of the total population-in Russia, on account of the lack of ex- perienced medical attention, and in Egypt on account of ophthalmia, due to the movement of the sand by the wind, or, more properly, to the irritation caused by this unusual lo- cal condition, which has made oph- thalmia general
 There were at last accounts near ly 200, 900 blind persons in European Russia, the proportion being high est in the northern provinces and conspicuously so in Finland, where the prevalence of blindness, four times greater than the general aver age in Europe, is ascribed to the 6atness of the country and the i'm perfect ventilation of the huts used by the peasantry. Many of these huts are either without chimneys or are supplied with primitive chim neys, which do not draw, and the escape of the smoke into the living apartments has a marked tendency to aggravate all eye troubles Though more than half the blind population of Europe is to be found in Russia there are only 25 asylums for the blind in that empire, one tenth of the total number in Eu- rope. Though the number of blind persons in the United States is less than one-third as large as the num- Der in Russia, the number of in- mates of blind asylums in the Unit cd States is larger than in any oth- CT country of the world By the last reports the total number of pu- pills in institutions for the blind in the United States was 8, 4S9, and the grounds and buildings devoted to their use were valued at 6,OOO,- lOO.-New York Sun