449 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
future generations. What the extent is of this deformity, can only be calculated 
by the value of the eyes as avenues of the soul. 
If total blindness is an indescribable calamity to the few, how much of a 
national calamity is that which narrows its field of vision down to a few inches, 
and shuts out forever the beauties of landscape and sky? The infliction of such 
wholesale misery is the mission of a higher education, as at present acquired, and 
the public school room is the popular instrument of its successful production. 
We are very particular to assert, however, that the successful pursuit of this 
higher scholarship does not, necessarily, require the sacrifice of perfect vision, or 
the enfeebling of that instrument of the mind that affords the most pleasure and 
instruction. pane 
To state our accusation plainly, we assert that the eyes of school children 
are undergoing a change of form whereby they are impaired as optical instru- 
ments, and that this deformity will, in time, become a regular and constant factor, 
fixed by the laws of heredity, so that what is now known as a deformed eye will 
be the normal eye. Let us illustrate: The normal eye is spherical in form, its 
axis or antero posterior diameter is about one inch in length, and its width, gen- 
erally, one-twelfth of an inch shorter than its length or axis. Its lens system, or 
cornea and crystalline lens, have such a focal distance that when the eye is fixed 
on an object more than twenty feet distant an image should be formed at the 
center of the eye, on the retina, without any effort at accommodation. When 
this is the case the axis of the eye and the lens system are said to correspond and 
the eye is normal. Our present system of school instruction destroys this per- 
fection of the eye, so that when a child has gone through the grammar school, 
and is ready for the high school, there is in many individuals, such a lengthen- 
ing of the axis of the eye that no object can be brought to a focus, unless it is 
brought up close to the face of the observer, and the person is said to be near 
sighted or myopic. We find then, that, although, the pupil entered the school 
room with a spherical eye, during a few years of school life the eye has under- 
gone a change, in which its length has been disproportionately increased and 
the eye has bulged backward, so that its focus is in front of the retina. This 
change has, obviously, been caused by continuous convergence of the eyes in 
the effort to bring to a focus rays of light from small print. This surrender of 
visual health for education is not made exclusively by the children of this coun- 
try; it is a tribute paid in all countries, where a higher mental development has 
been demanded. We get as proof from foreign lands the following figures : 
Vienna—near-sightedness, from 33 per cent. in the lowest grades of the school 
room to 60 per cent. in the highest. Breslau—myopes in the city schools—first 
grade 6.7 per cent.; second grade 10.5 per cent. In the normal schools 19.7 
per cent.; in the gymnasia 26.2 per cent. At K6nigsburg the percentage of 
myopia is rr.1 in the lowest grade, and the enormous amount of 62.10 per cent. 
in the highest. In St. Petersburg 13.6 per cent. in the lowest grade and 43.3 
per cent. in the highest. At Lucerne the rise of near-sightedness in pupils from 
seven to twenty-one years is from o to 61.5 per cent. 
