The Dallas express. [volume] (Dallas, Tex.) 1893-1970, 1922-01-14
EYES AND THE DEFECTS.

BY f. >. ROGERS " ~
A house avoids all stones and
knows. unconsciously, every ineq-
uality of the ground beneath him.
Watch little children in play bare
| ly missing obstacles and dangers
which would mean injuries and per-
haps death with swift unconscious
ness
| See with unbelievable accuracy
if we would succeed, is the first
verse of the biologic decalogue.
But see inaccurately and we die, is
the antithesis; and the animal which
failed to obey perished, inevitably
and quickly. The savage did the
same; our horse that stumbles is
useless, the playing child that hits
tits legs or trips, becomes, at least,
! a very different child, and a very
different man or woman from the
others who do not make these Wis
ural and co-ordinating blunders.
Such are the backward scholars in
school, and in large part they are
our failures in life, society's ex-
pensive degenerates, detectives and
dependents. They are increasing in
number with every step of civlliZa-
ton, because every such step means
the entangling difficulty of added
near vision.
Eye-strain effects have a peculiar
tendency to periodicities and waves
of better or worse. The nervous
centers can endure for a time the
burdens and irritation laid on them,
but at last give way
One of the more subtle but still
easily recognizable methods in which
eye-strain works perniciously is by
slow and general denutrition and
reduction of mental and physical
vitality whereby the resisting powers
of the mental and physical vitality
whereby the resisting powers of the
system are reduced to such a de-
gree that it becomes the easy prey
of infections, and OF general and
terminal diseases
1t is not pathetic source of so
cial misery that 20 per cent of eyes
are incapable of sewing; typewrit-
ing, bookkeeping, lathe work and
still sadder that their owners have
no knowledge of the fact, and that
they should suffer until break
down" comes? A certain, perhaps
large, percentage of all backward
school children, epileptics, prison.
ers, insane, Mysteries, dyspeptics,
have such eyes that glasses correc-
ting their optical defects would
bring them much relief, would often
have prevented much or all of their
tragedy. And the proof of this:
Put any pair of such glasses on
any one of us and within an hour
there would be headache, giddi-
ness, vomiting or intense suffering.
The cynics and sceptics of "eye-
strain eXaggerating" can be speedily
converted whenever they are earnest
enough to try simple experiment
on themselves.
1t is a truth awful in it's signi-
ficance that there are millions of us
who are good products of the evo-
J lutionary mill who have sound
minds, and good bodies, but who
are partial or complete failures,
{ simply because of a malcurvature
! of the cornea, too long or a too
short eyeball, no greater than the
thickness of sheet of thin paper.
The practice of optometry is con-
Quoted by optometrists who are leg
allied practitioners and may or may
not be dealers in optical merchan-
disc. The scientific optometrist
makes comprehensive examination
| fothe eyes without the use of drugs
to determine what glasses, if any,
are necessary to insure normal eye
sight While he may detect dis
eased conditions, he does not treat
them or pretend to, but refers such
cases to the medical practitioner