Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 September 1883 — How to Preserve the Eyesight. [ARTICLE]

How to Preserve the Eyesight.

The editor of this paper, who has parsed his three-score years without the use of eye-glasses, and can still read with liis natural eyes fine print, wishes to give other people nearing the sere and yellow leaf the benefit of his ocular experience. Therefore he tells them that in 1860 he found his eyesight failing, indicated by dark specks flitting over the and a hazy appearance of the letters when he was reading. Remembering to have heard his mother say that ex-President John Quincy Adams (who lived to about 80 years) had preserved his eyesight and read without glasses by pressing the outer and inner corners of his eyes together, the editor tried the experiment. After retiring to bed at night he has ever since the fall of 1869, before going to sleep, pressed gently together the outer and inner corner of each eye between the thumb and forefinger, and the corners of the Other between the third and -to pressure) lo both eyes. The philosophy of the experiment is explained in this way: As people pass the middle age ■there is said to be a tendency of the balls of the eye to lose their convexity—in common parlance, to flatten. The habitual pressure of the outer and inner corners of the eyes restores the convexity. and thereby the original power of seeing. Near-sighted persons are exceptions to this rule. Their nearsightedness (as we understand) is caused by too great convexity -of the eye. Oftentimes, as they advance in years, their eyes flatten; that is, lose their original convexity, and become more nearly like the good eyes of young people, and they can see better without glasses and lay them aside.— Huntsville (Ala.) Democrat.