The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1911-05-06
EVENING CHAT
BY RUTH CAMERoN.

Diu YOU know that you might have
dyspepsia, sore throat, nervous pros
ordtlon, asthma, epilepsy or catarrh-
courage, eomrade this is not going TO
De a patent medicine adyertisenent-
@h9 yet nave none of these things?
ror your trouble may be all in YOUR
Ieye-l1terally, not slangily.
ea nHeh, at least, is the statement re-
Tassin of Columbia University who
mas been studying for years upon the
SupJect OF the relation of the eve to
oeneI organs and the dangers of i'm
properly fitted eye glasses.
ne professor saws that falsely fit
ted glasses may be the cause nj. the
ABOVE widely varying diseases and a.
long list of others quite too numerous
Ito mention.
He says that he saw persons who
salo that they had been cured of, as
thhla' 1eVer, catarrh, epilepsy and dys-
pepsla; he says that he himself was
cured or bad stomach trouble; all by
IoDIalnlng properly fitted glasses.
ne also says good many more
Things along the same line, but 1 guess
nave quoted enough to point the
moral-which is, of course. that YOU
cannot be too careful in finding out
IWhether your eyes are working under
strain, which may be affecting your
whole system, and if they are, in MAX
| ing sure that they are properly fitted
with glasses that will relieve instead
OF intensifying this terrible strain.
That dizziness, that headache that
stomach trouble which your family
doctor cannot seem to reach-who
knows but that two little bits of glass
VIII do more for them than all his
| potionS?
Aye, there is the rub
A good oculiSt is an expensive per-
son to call on. know, but if you have
any use for your eyes, or, indeed, ac-
ICnrdInQr RI h. c1,,
era1 health, 1 don't see how you can
afford to depend upon an optician
| OF course. thousands and hundreds
| OF thousands of the glasses wearers-
in the United States one~fifth of the
population, or about 17OOO.OOO. come
under this classification-do get their
glasses after merely mechanical eX-
animation by the optician. But then,
there are thousands ana hundreds of
thousands of people whose sight fails
| before old age and who also have ner-
vous and other troubles that may be
due to this very cause
| The five or ten dollars that you
spend for an examination and pre-
scription from a first-class oculist-
what is it besides the hundreds of dol
lars those faithful servants, the eyes,
held you to earn each year?
| L know mana man of some ed
ucation, too-who does not believe in
either oculist or optician. He buys
| his glasses at the department stores.
He says he can get just as good ones
there. Think of tin this supposedly
enlightened age! Nor is he a rarity.
Quite the contrary. He must be one
| of a goodly class, else why would
| the department stores carry those
glasses, or why would every county
fair have its faker who industriously
advertises to fit you with glasses,
while you wait, for a quarter?
Let me tell you about little foreign
girl whom l met when investigating
the miracle of how a girl exists on the
small wages that some shops and fac
tories pay. The girl was telling me
the budget of her expenses. 1 believe
she was making something like seven
dollars a week, and yet one item of
that budget was S27. for visits to the
oculist and glasses in the last two
years.
Think what that meant to a girl
who. after her necessary living ex-
penses were paid, could not possibly
have more than SO a week for car
fares, clothes, amusements, incident
ais, and to tide her over possible ILL
ness.
And yet she knew enough to pay
that sum rather than go to an opti-
clan, whose failure to fit her eyes
properly might mean the jeopardizing
of her whole earning power.
Evidently the wisdom of far-sighted
extravaganza is not monopo1ized by
the so-called upper classes.