444 OPHTHALMOLOGY 



expert refractionist would make a university outdistance its rivals 

 more than, e. g., does all its " athletics." 



In every asylum for the insane some patients are there because of 

 bad eyes, and if only a few are curable of the chronic disease, 

 many could be relieved of the headaches, gastric, and other nutri- 

 tional diseases which burden the attending physicians and the tax- 

 payer. In one great institution for epileptics, a little experiment with 

 glasses, imperfectly executed in many ways, showed a greater per- 

 centage of cures, a greater reduction in the number of seizures, than 

 by all other methods of cure combined that had been tried in the 

 institution. And yet the official report characterized the experiment 

 as "disappointing" and sneered and misrepresented it. Epilepsy, it 

 has been demonstrated, is in many cases due to ametropia; many 

 cases could be prevented by proper glasses in the child, or during the 

 early history of the case. In the chronic, severe, and hopeless cases 

 it may not be always or even frequently curable. The conditions of 

 the glass-treatment are exceptionally difficult to carry out, and often 

 cannot be done at all, especially if conscience and sympathy are 

 absent. The improved general health, freedom from headaches, etc., 

 would make it at least a saving of money for the state to pay an 

 expert resident oculist. This, apart from the humane consideration. 

 Nobody can rightly estimate the number of degenerates, paupers, 

 defectives, and dependents loaded upon the producers and tax- 

 payers because reading, writing, sewing, handicrafts, etc., are im- 

 possible to a person with disqualifying astigmatism. Neglect of the 

 fact greatly increases the tax-rate and makes the philanthropic 

 miserable. 



Why does the truant-boy exist, and why does he so often develop 

 into the young criminal? If the majority of these, as Dr. Case of the 

 Elmira Reformatory finds, have an ocular defect that makes vision 

 impossible for any continued reading, writing, or handwork, does 

 not the fact modify all penology? If the sewing-girl cannot possibly 

 sew or do any such kind of eye-work, what alternative is often left 

 her except crime? Sociology is very frequently another name for 

 ophthalmology. 



And if even to-day, in the city, the poor cannot be fitted with 

 a simple device to make their lives happy and independent, how is 

 it with the other half or three fourths of the people who live in small 

 towns and in the country supplied only with the itinerant criminal 

 spectacle-peddler? The farmers and their families now waste most of 

 their evenings and their winters, and then the sociologist blames 

 them for their vile country newspaper and their unprogressiveness. 



Philosophers and thoughtless critics bewail the literary pessimism 

 of the age. It is indeed a pitiable and a pitiful fact. In a time when 

 comfort and possibility of education and of enjoyment have suddenly 



