EFFECTS OF STUDY OX THE EYESIGHT. 79 



" Of 213 cases of eye-disease seen during the last year among the paupers of 

 Buffalo, the record shows only three and one-half per cent, to have been near- 

 sighted." 



Donders remarked this difference between his private patients 

 representing the wealthy and cultivated class and his hospital pa- 

 tients : that while over-sight was distributed between the two classes 

 in nearly equal proportion, near-sight occurred much more frequently 

 among his private patients. 



The investigations of Dr. Peter A. Callan belong in this category, 

 with a qualification. He examined the sight of 457 colored-school 

 pupils, aged from five to nineteen years, of the New York public 

 schools, Nos. 3 and 4, and he found but 2.6 per cent, of them near- 

 sighted. This field was selected because it was thought to furnish 

 the nearest approach to the normal eye to be found in this locality. 

 The Southern freedmen, he thinks, would afford the best possible 

 field for this special line of investigation. As a class, the colored 

 people of New York, prior to this generation, had very limited educa- 

 tional advantages, and the occupations which tax the sight, like en- 

 graving, etc., have never been known among them. But as these 

 457 subjects are now receiving the best school-training that the city 

 affords, the superior condition of their sight must be referred to their 

 freedom from hereditary tendency to myopia. The conscientious 

 painstaking and thoroughness of Dr. Callan's work, as exhibited in 

 his report, are manifest and noteworthy. 



The uniform drift of results in all the examinations here referred 

 to, and relating to over 26,000 individuals, may be regarded as suf- 

 ficiently establishing the following propositions: 



1. That, as a rule, near-sight originates in school-life. 



2. That a large percentage of the scholars are thus afflicted the 

 percentage progressing with the stage of advancement in study. 



3. That near-sight is progressive in degree, according to the length 

 of school-experience. 



But, though the demonstration of these points is now complete, 

 further and successive examinations will still be useful to determine 

 the improvement consequent upon the adoption of means to that end, 

 and to furnish a standard of comparison between different schools in 

 respect to material or methods, or both that is, first, in respect to 

 arrangement of building, amount and direction of light, character and 

 position of desks, seats, etc. ; and, second, in respect to methods of 

 teaching, especially in the earlier years, and generally to the intelli- 

 gent observance and enforcement by the teachers of hygienic condi- 

 tions. Dr. Howe's report is interesting in this feature, showing 

 that "in schools where the hygienic conditions relating to the posi- 

 tion of the pupils and the amount of light are disregarded, the pro- 

 portion of near-sighted pupils grows larger; and conversely, where 

 these relations are observed, the number diminishes ; " and he gives 



