696 • Mr. Ernest Clarke [June 0, 



battleship, and became gradually worse. He was taken first to Lemnos, 

 and on January 3 of this year was admitted into the King George 

 Hospital. He suffered from constant headache, could not stand, had 

 a marked squint, could not read, and could not face the light. His 

 mentality was normal but slow, and his memory sluggish. Xo lesion 

 was discovered, and no treatment did any good until he Avas placed 

 under atropine by Dr. Harwood, when he at once improved. The 

 atropine paralyzed the focussing muscle, and therefore he could not 

 correct his defect. AVhile he was under the atropine he was thoroughly 

 tested, and finally given glasses correcting a very small astigmatic 

 error, 0"37 in one eye, and 0*25 in the other. He could read com- 

 fortably a few hours' after getting the glasses, and within a week he 

 could walk, and his headaches and giddiness had disappeared. It 

 simply meant that the patient had had nerve energy knocked out 

 of him, and that, when the glasses were put on, the tap of 

 further leakage was turned off, and he was able to use his nerve 

 energy. 



Neurasthenia which follows head injuries is very commonly due 

 to eyestrain, and a large number of cases have been cured by putting 

 them into proper glasses. Unfortunately sometimes the injuries in 

 these cases are so bad and the men are so ill that they cannot leave 

 their beds, and to do the work of testing them properly they must 

 come into our dark room and go through a thorough testing. Dr. 

 Harwood has obtained wonderfully good results in a large number of 

 cases simply by bandaging up one eye. Where there is a want of 

 balance only one eye is left, and no attempt is made to send out 

 impulses to the other eye. In some cases where there was astigmatism 

 present as well he bandaged up both eyes for some time in the day, 

 and a very large amount of good was obtained. 



Again, a large number of the soldiers in our wards have bad open 

 wounds, and sometimes these remain absolutely stationary ; they do 

 not seem to make any headway at all. The men read a great deal — 

 some of them read 'more than they have ever read in their lives 

 before — and if eyestrain is present you can imagine they are using 

 up nerve energy that is wanted for the repairing process. By putting 

 them into proper glasses an improvement at once occurred. 



From the foregoing remarks you can easily imagine how very 

 careful we have to be in doing this testing. It is better to give no 

 glasses at all than to give a glass that is almost right, because the eye 

 can supply the deficiency. The eyes of all these men are put under 

 atropine or homatropine, because all the men are under forty, and 

 then our most useful servant is the ophthalmometer, or astigraometer. 

 This instrument has passed through many improvements since it was 

 first devised by Javal of Paris, and the perfected model made by 

 Meyrowitz of New York is now before you. [The Ophthalmometer 

 (and its working) was here explained.] This instrument records an 

 astigmatism as low as 0' 12 D and an obliquity of even '2\ 



