The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1921-12-26
TOPEKA STATE JOURNAL
Information Bureau
FREDERIC j. HAsIzIN. Director.
Washington, D. G.
RECREATION FOR YOUR EYES.


in the midst of a thunderstorm, a IA
year-old boy was stunned by lightning.
A common enough occurrence, you
! may think, but there was something
most uncommon about this one. The
boy had always had very poor vision
was nearly blind, in fact-but when
he recovered consciousness after the
| lightning bolt and looked about for
his glasses, ne found that he did not
need them. He could see perfectly!
This case gives support to the new
! ophthalmology, which declares that
| the eye is a perfect instrument and
| that if we only learn to use it perfectly
we can all throw away our glasses.
! Myopia, hypermetropia and astigma-
tism are all defects caused by eye
strain, it says, and not by diseased
or imperfect visual organs. They are
therefore durable by proper methods
of relaxation. whereas the old ophthal-
malogy held that they We're incurable
being caused by imperfect apparatus,
defective from birth.
According to DR. William H. Bates,
the father of the low ophthalmology,
who has examined and treated the
! eyes of hundreds -ofNthousands of pa
| TENTS at his clinic at the Harlem hos
| pital here in New York, seeing IS
passive performance, and with per
y
| fort. It is only when we Strain TO
see at a distance that we become
myopic or near-sighted, and when we
strain to see at close quarters that
we beCome hypermetropic or far
| sighted. If we would only relax the
eyes and not put forth such tremen-
dous effort, we would find our vision
greatly improved.
But how to relax the eyes? DR..
Bates prescribes remembering black
fNf /, urRi.N h
DDS. Close your eyes. put the palms
of your hands across them, being care
! full to exert no pressure on the eye
balls, and remember black Think
Of the blacklist thing you kno%-a
mans silk hat, a totally black cat or a
| black velour curtain. This sounds
easy, but as a matter of fact it IS
quite the opposite. Few people can
| imagine perfectly without mental
strain; if they could they would not
| have defective vision. For one of
| the strange discoveries of the new
! ophthalmology is, that if you can re-
member perfectly or imagine perfect
| ly, you can see perfectly.
Remember Black.
! Some people must practice for a
| long time before they can remember
| black without at the same time think
| ing of other colors, and it is almost
! impossible to hold the image of any
one black object in the mind for
more than a couple of seconds. 1t
| is therefore best not to dwell upon
one object but to skip from one black
article to another-shoes, coat, UNI
| brella, muffler, cat. curtain, etc.
I When you can remember black per-
| fectly with your eyes closed, you must
learn to do so with your eyes open.
| You may next be asked to remember
| the Whiteness of snow with the sun
| shining on it, after which you are TO
/ -
order to see a very small and very
| black 90 or perhaps merely a period.
| When you look at the test card again
/ you will doubtless. be surprised -
find that you can read the bottom line,
which formerly was only a blur
| 1t is simply matter of relaxation.
/ The boy who was stunned by light
ming had the process done for him.
| DR.. Bates does not know the boy and
| he is unable to form any definite opin-
ion without having a complete his
| tory of the case but it is possible,
he thinks that the lightning stroke
| and the. boys subsequent unconscious
| ness brought about a relaxed condi-
| ton of the eyes which/felieved them
of their habitual strain and Produced
normal vision as if by a miracle.
! DR.. Bates has --ritten a book on
| the correction of imperfect vision
without glasses in which he describes
many patients who were able to dis
card their glasses in periods ranging
| from hours to weeks. Some felt i'm
mediate relief after a twenty minute
| period of relaxation. Others had 20
/ keep it up for two or three ten min
ute periods each day over a long
| period.< One man, who had always
suffered from defective vision and
| who had worn glasses since he was q
boy, devoted one entire day to the re-
taxation process, sitting quietly in a
| darkened room and languidly sum-
moning a long procession of black OBJ
jects to mind. At the end of tho
could see perfectly without his horn
trimmed spectacles.
"Opthalmologists tell US that the
visual organ of man was never in
tended for the uses to which it is
now put" DR.. Bates explains in his
book. Long before there were any
schools or printing presses, electric
lights or moving pictures, it was COM
plete. In those days it served the
lneed of the human animal perfectly.
Man was hunter. herdsman, a
farmer, a fighter. He needed, we are
told mainly distant vision, and since
the eye at rest is adjusted for distant
vision, sight is supposed to have been
ordinarily as passive as the perceptiJn
of sound, requiring no muscular action
whatever.
Civilization Injuries Eyes.
while primitive man appears to
! have suffered but little from defects
of vision, it is estimated that of per-
sons over 81 living under civilized
conditions, out OF every 10 have
imperfect sight. and as the age in
creases the proportion increases until
at 40 it is almost impossible to find
a person free from visual defects.
!. Statistics of the army show this con-
\ clusively."
DIR. Bates examines on an avera sc
of $4,000 pairs of eyes a year at the
New York Eye and Ear Infirmary
and other institutions. In this work, ,
he says, Il noticed many cases in
which errors of refraction either re-
covered spontaneously, or changed
their form, and I was unable either to
ignore them or to satisfy myself with
the orthodox explanations. In course
of time I discovered that myopia AMI
hypermetropia, like astigmatism,
could be produced at will; that myopia