A vast amount of popular misapprehension and prejudice exists as to the
use of spectacles. Many persons who need them object to wearing them for
various reasons. Some fear that it will lead their friends to suspect that
they are getting old. Others think it will cause them to be suspected of
wishing to appear learned or cultured. Some persons do not want to begin
to wear them lest, having acquired the habit, they may not be able to
leave them off or to see well without them. Others again object to glasses
only on account of their inconvenience. I have personally met with many of
all these classes of persons, but I have frequently heard of another class
that I have never met with, namely, those who do not need glasses, but who
wear them just for effect and to attract attention. Now, the simple truth
is that there are just two good reasons for wearing spectacles, and only
two. One is that we may see better, the other is that our eyes may be
relieved of strain. Often both these reasons are combined in the same
case. Many children begin to be near-sighted after they have attended
school a few years. They first find it out by observing that they cannot
see letters or figures on the blackboard as far as the other children.
They can use their eyes as much as they want to without fatigue or
blurring, or smarting, or burning, or itching, or pain in the eyes, or
headache. In short, they show no symptoms of eye strain. They simply do
not see distant objects distinctly. Such children should be fitted with
glasses at once that will enable them to see as well as others at a
distance, and these glasses should be worn constantly. The child should be
instructed to take them off only when necessary to wipe them or to wipe or
bathe the eyes and on going to bed. The sooner the eyes get accustomed to
them the less likely is the near-sightedness to increase. Moreover, the
child who sees clearly only a few feet away from him loses a very
important part of his education. Our eyes gather information for us when
we are least thinking of it, by taking cognizance of the many objects that
come within our field of vision just as our ears gather material for the
proper development of our minds in listening to general conversation or to
the sounds of nature and of busy life about us. It is the duty of every
one to make the best possible use of the faculties the Creator has
bestowed upon him. The near-sighted person who does not have his vision
corrected by glasses fails in the performance of this duty.
[8] Continued from SUPPLEMENT, No. 647, page 10342.
From a paper by David Webster. M.D., professor of ophthalmology in the New
York Polyclinic and surgeon to the Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital, New
York.
Again, the time comes in the life of every one who is not near-sighted,
and who lives to a good old age, when he cannot see near objects well
without glasses. Between the ages of 40 and 50, the crystalline lenses of
his eyes having hardened along with the other tissues of his body, he
finds it impossible to focalize as he used to. He holds his book farther
and farther away from his eyes, and finally he finds that he cannot read
fine print at all, or without straining his eyes. Then he must accept the
unpleasant fact that he is getting old-sighted, and if he wishes to use,
and not abuse, his eyes, he must get glasses to take the place of his lost
accommodation and with which he can read easily. Some persons who are
near-sighted in one eye and far-sighted in the other never need glasses,
but always do their reading and other near work with the near-sighted eye
and their distant seeing with the far-sighted eye. I believe I read a long
time ago, in an article by himself in the New York _Ledger_, that this was
the case with the late Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. But the vast majority of
persons who wear glasses, both for the distance and for the near, can see
quite as well without them. They do not wear them in order to be able to
see, but in order to have the strain removed from their eyes, and to be
relieved from the many disagreeable symptoms, both direct and reflex, that
result from eye strain.