APPENDIX A 1 



HOME CONDITIONS AND EYESIGHT 

 By KARL PEARSON, F.R.S. 



It may not be without interest, in view of recent criticisms of a memoir 

 by Miss Barrington and myself 2 , to publish some further determinations of the 

 relation of home conditions to sight. 



Before doing so it will be well to point out one or two important considera- 

 tions which I think have considerable bearing on the manner in which statistics 

 ought to be collected, having regard to the medical inspection of school children, 

 which is now becoming universal. 



The first point I would insist upon is that careful distinction must be made 

 between (a) home environment and (b) school environment. 



Our % paper dealt chiefly with the influence of home environment on both 

 refraction and acuity of vision. Now, as far as I am aware, the only material 

 hitherto available for testing the influence of the actual home conditions on 

 the presence of eye disease, on the goodness or badness of vision, or on 

 shortsightedness, is that provided by the report of the Edinburgh Charity 

 Organization Committee, where we have for the first time the sociological report 

 on the home conditions placed alongside the ophthalmological report on the 

 child's eyes, and accompanied in each case by the age of the child. I do not 

 see how it is possible without such information to draw conclusions as to 

 whether the home conditions do or do not affect sight. I am quite prepared 

 to be shewn that the conditions in Edinburgh are exceptional, but the proof 

 can only be given when the children who are reported on elsewhere are followed 

 up into their- homes, and the state of these is recorded, as in the Edinburgh 

 investigation. 



Further, the Edinburgh material was of special value, because there is not 

 the same extraordinary mixture of racial types in that city which is to be 

 found in Glasgow or London. We are told, for example, that Russian Jews 

 have in London a very high percentage of eye defect. Any one who has studied 

 the copious statistics of Randal must be convinced that the degree and extent 

 of myopia is markedly a racial character 3 . Those who have investigated any 



1 Reprinted by kind permission from the British Medical Journal, July 17, 1909. 



* Eugenics Laboratory Memoirs, No. v, "A First Study of Vision and of the Relative 

 Influence of Heredity and Environment on Sight." Cambridge University Press. 



* The Jews, like the Germans, are largely brachycephalic, and the increasing 

 brachycephaly of the town populations is a point not without suggestiveness for 

 changes in eyesight. 



