103 6] on Eyesight and the War 695 



I do not think there is a single functional nerve trouble that may 

 not be due- to, or seriously aggravated by, eyestrain caused by the 

 presence of low errors of astigmatism, by low anisometropia, or want 

 of balance of the external muscles. I will show you how this waste 

 of nerve energy affects the soldier. 



You have heard a great deal recently of the effect of high explo- 

 sives. The wind pressure in high explosives is enormous ; so 

 enormous is it that I had one case of an officer whose eye was abso- 

 lutely smashed, full of blood, and the whole of the retina detached, 

 although no part of the bomb touched it — simply by the wind 

 pressure. On the other hand, by the swing of the pendulum we get 

 a high vacuum. In the September air raid a high explosive fell in 

 St. Bartholomew's Close, causing enormous destruction. Close by is 

 the big hall of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, which contains a large 

 number of stained-glass windows, all of which were closed ; many of 

 those windows were blown out by the explosion, showing that at some 

 time the pressure inside the building was higher than the pressure 

 outside, and that happened in some other places in London. That 

 was exemplified in a case I had of a man wounded at Festubert. 

 His two companions on the left were killed, and he felt, on putting 

 his hand up to his eye, that it had been injured. He walked back a 

 mile and half to the dressing-station, where a pad and a bandage 

 were put on. He was sent home, and came under my care at the 

 King George Hospital. He was put on the operating- table and 

 chloroformed, with the idea of removing the remains of the damaged 

 eye, but to my surprise, on clearing away the blood-clot, I found no 

 eye there at all — simply the ragged ends of torn muscles. They had 

 not been cut, but torn. That eye had been pulled out on the battle- 

 field by the vacuum caused by the high explosive. If such enormous 

 effects take place, you can easily imagine the harmful effect on the 

 men who are in the neighbourhood. There may be no external 

 injury at all, but they suffer as they would in a really bad accident, 

 such as a railway collision ; " virtue " has been knocked out of them : 

 an enormous amount of nerve energy has leaked out. 



AVe have seen that eyestrain causes leakage of nerve energy. We 

 want in these men to save every bit in the " store-house " that is left 

 to them, and therefore if eyestrain is present we want to correct it. 

 We are very fortunate at the King George Hospital in having as our 

 Resident Medical Officer in the eye wards Dr. Harwood, who is keenly 

 alive to the importance of eyestrain and the effects of low errors of 

 astigmatism, and wonderful and miraculous have been some of the 

 cures he has made with simply a pair of glasses. One case— perhaps 

 the most marked— I cannot refrain from alluding to : the man, a 

 sergeant-major, aged thirty-eight, was hit by a wet sand-bag falling 

 on him from a height of eight feet while he was lying in his dug-out 

 in Gallipoli, on November 24, 1915. He was not rendered unconscious, 

 but found he could not walk, and was very giddy. He was put on a 



