The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1917-11-08
About Your Eyes
By Frederick J. Haskin

Have we all defective vision? Not
| all, but most of US, is the opinion of
medical officers who have recently ex-
amined thousands of men for military
service. In some the defect is so slight
that it never gave any trouble; in
others it ranges all the way from color
blindness to bad case of astigmatism.
But perfect pair of eyes is about as
rare as perfect disposition.
That is what the Army records show.
and recent examination of school
children in a large Eastern city reveal
ed something else-namely, that near
sightedness is on the increase. A sur
prising number of children were unable
to read letters placed only short dis
lance from them; many admitted they
had been having trouble in seeing the
blackboard. and others were already
wearing glasses.
The constant reading and 'near"
work required of school children these
days is thought to be the chief cause of
this calamity. Reading, particularly,
focuses the eyes on a point not more
than two feet away, while the human
eye was devised for looking at things
at some dlsta ice. Moreover, it is a
greater strain on the eyes than any
thing else. The reason for this is ex-
planned by DR.. Edn und Burke Huey in
his book. "The Psychology and Ped
agogy of Reading" In reading one
page, he points out, our eyes must per
form perhaps $50 quick movements,
while in looking at any ordinary object
they perform only fraction of that
number.
Authorities who believe that reading
is the chief cause OF near-sig htedness
point to the fact that this type of de-
fective vision is rarely found among un-
educated people. Usually it is the scholar
and the bookworm who must pay for
their knowledge by wearing glasses.
And, for the encouragement of the
near sighted, it may be stated that &C.
casionallY such men have been able to
make even their lack OF sight reach to
their advantage Lafcadio Hearn, for
example, was said to possess only one
seventh of a mans normal eyesight-a
fact taken by his biographers to account
for his remarkable talent for painting
word pictures. When Hearn beheld a
tree he beheld only the brilliant or
somber color of its foliage-he could
not see each minute leaf, notch and
twig, nor the ants crawling up It's bark.
And so he wrote-in colors-as an i'm
pressionistic artist paints a landscape.
with genius that no ormal-sighted
American has ever been able to equal
On the other hand, here is G. Ber-
nard Shaw, whose facility for shocking
shocking people Is claimed by his biog-
raphers to be partly due, at least, to
his normal vision. An occulist once in
formed Mr.. Shaw that his eyesight was
dDcOIuNSlf MI mai nliCAGoo IlldL VI JO
per cent. of the rest of the world was
abnormal. Mr.. Shaw himself admits
that this is why he always sees the
world the way it really is, while other
people see 1t the way they think it is.
However, this particular & enius is a
notable exception to the argument that
excessive reading brings on near
sightedness, for Mr.. Shaw is an omniv-
orous reader, reading everything that
has ever been written in both music and
type. He is rather an instance to be
quoted in the argument that defective
vision of all kinds is usually hereditary
and present from babyhood and not
produced by eye-strain.