Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/316

the months of the school year are so great that the minimum and maximum extremes are frequently exceeded. (3) The necessary rules for lighting buildings are not adhered to, thus placing an unnecessary strain upon the eyes of all attempting to read and write. (4) There is a growing tendency to use the eyes at a period of life which is in every way ill fitted to the task. If these four propositions have been established, and if the pessimistic forebodings are justified, then investigations of the eyes should discover a general destruction of the eyes of civilized countries and an increasing number of eyes injured during the age of from 6 to 9.

 

Investigating the Eyes of School Children.

Systematic investigations of eyes upon a wide scale were not begun till 1865. At that date Dr. Herman Cohn commenced his investigations of the eyes of school children in Breslau. After having examined ten thousand children, he summarized his results as follows:

Short-sightedness hardly exists in the village schools: the number of cases increases steadily with the increasing demands which the schools make upon the eyes, and reaches the highest point in the gymnasia.

The number of short-sighted scholars rises regularly from the lowest to the highest classes in all institutions.

The average degree of myopia increases from class to class, that is, the short-sighted become more so.

The circular of information of the United States Bureau of Information, No. 6, 1881, in speaking of the many investigations which had been made in this and other countries said:

All, without a single exception, prove beyond a doubt that near-sightedness, beginning, perhaps, at nothing in the lower classes in the school and first year of school life, steadily increases from class to class in the school until in the highest grades or in the last years of school attendance it has actually developed itself in as many as 60 or 70 per cent, of all the pupils.

In all these tests children were not regarded as near-sighted unless their visual acuity in one or both eyes was but two thirds of normal vision or less. Think of the significance of these statements which are entirely authoritative. Pupils entering our schools come to us with good eyes, but if they stay with us till the end of the course, GO to 70 per cent, of them will leave us with but two thirds normal visual acuity or less. Most of this loss of vision is caused directly by the strain put upon the eyes in reading, writing and drawing.

 

The Sacrifices caused by Premature Strain

The picture drawn by the investigators during the two decades following 1865 was dark indeed. The only ray of hope was found in the fact that the destruction of the eyes did not begin during the first few years of school, so that pupils dropping out before the eighth