The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-01-23

Tt, Conn. Read Before the Connecticut 'nuary 14th, 1909.
 small thing to realize suddenly and un- expectedly that you have discovered the way to open 8 barred door that seemed to hopelessly shut out the light and happiness of a fellow being for ever.
 It required two careful sittings for me to work out that case of mixed astigmatism by neutralizing the shad- oWS. q have no doubt many of my more gifted brethren would have done 1t in one, but the fact that so ordin- ary an operator as the writer could accomplish it, should give courage to any who are timid or inclined to be hopeless about mastering the objective method.
 G, The warning shadows being at last lald, the true refractive errors prov ed to be, five and one-half dioptries of myopia, combined with hyperopic ast1gmatism of six dioptries. The correcting lenses needed were minus o:50 spheres, combined with plus 500 cylinders, axis 90 each eye. With these, vision at once rose to 2O-20-; she could read No. Jaeger at IA inches, and no further trouble is an- ticipated.
 With another more recent and far simpler case, I will close the compari- sons. January 9th. 1909, lady, age about thirty, brought in her eve glasses, with one lens broken which she wanted renewed. Stated that she had worn them several years but not easily; couldn't quite get along with out them, but they were never entire ly comfortable. Suggested that she would like to have me examine her eyes. The errors were found 70 re- quire: Right eye, Fl. cyl. ax. 105; left eye, Fl. cyl. ax. 75. The old lenses she had been struggling with so long were, -1.25 cyl. ax. 180 o. U
 Passlng by the most prolific source Of or reason for the wearing of wrong glasses, viz, the hundreds who in jew elery shops or department stores take the grave sisk of fitting themselves, many wrong glasses are often worn because the grinder, who is human, often makes them wrong. In all lines Of work mistakes are liable to occur, but the intricate and delicate art of lens grinding, I believe, presents more opportunities for errors than almost any other. Certainly in no profession Is absolute accuracy more needed than in this of ours. And in no other are mistakes liable to produce more disas- trOuS results.
 While the majority of prescription lenses are probably correctly made, yet in that very fact lies a certain Ne]itSC1. WE IHuSC never IOr&oC mat on us as prescribers, and not on the manufacturer. rests the responsibility of giving out a faulty lens. As in examinations we must be able to cor rectly measure the defective curves of the eye itself, so we must also be able to analyze and measure the most diff flcult lens after it is returned to us Ana we should never fail to do this, for we alone stand between the wearer and possible harm from wrong work.
 Lenses for the eye should never be regarded In any sense as merchandise The very much more than ordinary skill required to prescribe them cor rectly, together with their intimate relation to health and well-b being, should ever prevent their being de- graded to such a level
 If your prices for prescription lenses are somewhat higher than those of your competitors, who are less well informed, and who work from a com mercial standpoint only, let me assure you they hay a perfect right to be higher, and the public is very much the gainer thereby.
 The minor defects often seen in lenses, such as being unevenly match ed in shape or size or thickness: un- evently drilled; drilled too near the edge, leaving ':air-holes''; surfaces pitted, scratched, or otherwise blem- ished,-these, while extremely annoy ing, and not by any means to be ex- cused or accepted, are of but little importance compared with errors in surface grinding, wrongly located cylindrical axes, faulty decentering for prismatic effects, etc. Errors here are indeed vital. Ifsin this connec- tion, eternal vigilance is not the price of liberty, it may well be, and cer- tainly ought to be, the price of a re- fractionist's reputation.