358 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



examination proves the same facts. In Philadelphia, a committee of 

 physicians of the Medical Society examined, with the ophthalmoscope, 

 the eyes of four thousand children in the public schools, and their 

 report exhibits similar conclusions. In San Francisco, the Depart- 

 ment Superintendent of the Public Schools asserts that, of the pupils 

 who enter the public schools at the eighth grade, and work their way 

 up to the high-school, fully forty per cent are afflicted with one or 

 another form of myopia. Dr. Agnew shows, in a recent report on the 

 progress of near-sightedness in this country, that "our school-rooms 

 are the factors most directly influential in the gradual and increasing 

 development of a race of spectacle-using people." Dr. Derby, Dr. 

 Seguin, and many other scientific philanthropic gentlemen, have ut- 

 tered similar opinions. Professor Calhoun, of the Atlanta Medical 

 College, says, on this subject, that in the interior of the eye there is 

 an elastic muscle, called the ciliary muscle (circumscribing that aper- 

 ture through which light is conveyed to the retina), by which the 

 sight is graduated to different distances. In a normal eye, the con- 

 tractions and expansions of this muscle are not noticed by us ; but in 

 a near-sighted or over-sighted eye these changes are violent and some- 

 times painful ; and, eventually, the action of this muscle is spasmodic 

 and so weakened that the sight is permanently injured. Near-sighted- 

 ness, he remarks, seldom begins until the sixth year, when children 

 commence using the eye on school-books. There are records of the 

 examinations of the eyes of forty-five thousand school-children, of all 

 ages and grades, white and colored, and it has been proved that near- 

 sightedness increases, from class to class, until, in the highest grades, 

 it has actually been developed in as many as sixty or seventy per cent 

 of all the scholars. I saw, lately, in the " Baltimore Sun," that a stu- 

 dious little girl in a public school in that city was struck with blind- 

 ness at her desk, just after finishing her reading-lesson. 



The causes to which this deterioration of eye-sight has been attrib- 

 uted are alleged to be cross-lights from opposite windows, light shin- 

 ing directly on the face, insufficient light, small types, and to the 

 position of the desk, forcing the scholar to bend over and bring the 

 eyes too close to the book or writing-paper, etc. 



But, were all these defects remedied, the integrity of the eye would 

 not be restored nor its deterioration prevented. The chief causes of 

 the evil would still remain. These are the colors of the paper and ink. 

 White paper and black ink are ruining the eye-sight of all reading 

 nations. The " rays of the sun," says Lord Bacon, " are reflected by a 

 white body, and are absorbed by a black one." No one dissents from 

 this opinion ; but, despite these indications of nature and of philoso- 

 phy, we print our books and write our letters in direct opposition to 

 the suggestions of optical science. 



When we read a book printed in the existing mode, we do not see 

 the letters, which, being black, are non-reflective. The shapes reach 



