Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 March 1874 — Schools and Eyes. [ARTICLE]

Schools and Eyes.

- The Philadelphia Ledger has recently been calling attention to the strain necessarily placed upon the eyes of the public school pupils in that city, and .sharply criticises the want of adaptation in the structure of the buildings to the heath of those ornamental and useful organs. The main point of these criticisms is by no means exclusively applicable to Philadelphia. The public school-houses there are, on an average, better arranged id this respect than they are in many other places. At all events, the fault is far from being a.peeullar or uncommon one. If there is any part of the earth’s surface where schools are to be found at all in whiek the same deficiency does not exist, we must acknowledge our ignorance of even the name of that happy locality. The increasing prevalence of certain defects of the eye has been for many years a subject of- serious consideration and investigation in Germany, Cases of near-sightedness especially, have in that country been found to be becoming more and more numerous. Similar investigations would undoubtedly develop something like this state of ali'airs here, though not to the same degree. -But, however our country may in regard to these points compare with Germany or any other nation, there is quite enough here to demand the earnest attention of parents, teachers, physicians, and all others who take an interest in the welfare of the boys' and girls who are growing up. A disease of the eye, it is true, does not often endanger life; nor is near-sightedness as serious a calamity as the loss of a limb. But a man, and especially an educated man, who, on account of chronic inflammation of the conjunctiva or incipient amaurosis is forbidden by his physician to read or study, except perhaps a very short time by daylight each day, is deprived of privileges for which to many individuals no amount of money, however great, would be a substitute. The inconveniences to which a near-sighted man is subjected, whether he weirs spectacles or goes without them, are often no slight matter. Nor are they Always mere inconveniences. There are many employments from which he is, where the delect exists in a serious degree, either practically excluded, or in the exercise of whfch he is subjected, to great impediments and difficulties. The . question of the,, condition of a school pupil’s eyes relates not only to the manner but to the extent of their use. Many children, particularly those under ten or twelve years of age, are required to keep their eyes upon the pages of books fully twiee as much as they ought to be. Excessive labor of the eyes is one of the ways in which school-boys and school-girls, through the misdirected zeal of their parents to -give them a good education, are often in a great measure deprived of the power of enjoying or using that education after they have got it. Unhappily, it is not the only way. It would be an exceedingly valuable investigation if medical gentlemen of skill and reputation should be employed to

make a careful examination .of the eyes of the pupils of the public schools of our large cities. This could probably be done with little expense. There are scientific men of high standing who would, we should imagine, be glad to assist in the work for little compensation. The results of such an investigf tion would, unquestionably, startle the community. Whether the work would immediately accomplish anything more than merely to create a sensation on the subject, we do not know. But in any case it would set some people thinking about the matter who never gave any attention to it before, and would ultimately, if not at once, produce beneficial effects. There is scarcely any branch of hygiene in regard to which so much definite and tangible knowledge could be obtained by scientific examinations and investigations of the kind of which we are speaking as that which relates to the health and preservation of the organs of sight. Indeed, some of the defects to which they are liable can not only be ascertained with certainty, but defined with almost mathematical exactness. This is especially true of the important and, as we have already intimated, increasing defect of near-sightedness. It is almost as easy to know precisely how near-sighted an individual is as how tall he is, or how many pounds he weighs. Any good optician or oculist could in a couple of hours or less find out the exact condition in this respect of every individual in a pretty large school. We have had room in this article to do nothing more than call attention to the general subject of it. Particular illustrations, however, of the evils to which we have been alluding will, we doubt not, at once occur to many of our readers* especially those of them who are the parents of children attending either public or private schools. These illustrations would, we fear, present themselves still more numerously and forcibly if parents and others interested in the education ot children would more generally than is now the case take the interest in the subject which its importance demands.— New York Times.