Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 January 1903 — LIGHT AND OUR EYES. [ARTICLE]

LIGHT AND OUR EYES.

Failing Eyesight Not a Result of Civilization. .. In our issues of March 8 and April 5, 1902, we noticed the newspaperlsh delusion that failing eyesight is a result of civilization, and that the proof of this Is the increased use of spectacles, says American Medicine. We said that the saffron-colored medical journals would soon be echoing this nonsense. This has come true, and we read In our contemporaries that “failing eyesight is the deplorable and unavoidable concomitant feature of advanced civilization,” that the habit of wearing glasses is the proof of this, a habit growing not only in Germany, but all over the world, and that gas and electric light have much to do with this eyesight failure, possibly, also, dust and fog, and traveling underground. The cure advocated is that “an individual should avoid poring over small print by artificial light, except when absolutely necessary.” Poor uewspaperdom. To write without thinking, without any knowledge of the facts and without seeking any knowledge. Is so easy that, in the stilted language quoted. It seems “a deplorable but unavoidable concomitant feature of advanced civilization.” A little time ago this same writer explained that the ilibealth of Carlyle was due to “the insanitary, and sedentary existence he led.” He did not care to learn that Carlyle’s “existence” was not insanitary and absolutely not sedentary, because he exercised in the open air the greater part of the walking porflon of every day. In the same way our contemporary advises the use of the rushlights and tallow dips of our ancestors instead of our sbperlbr gas and electric lights. Spectacles, we may add, *are not a proof of failing eyesight, as there Is no scientific proof whatsoever that the eyesight of civilized people Ik failing, and there Is every reason to believe that It Is Improving. If there were proof of failing eyesight the cure for it is not to “avoid the poring,” but to get proper spectacles for the “porer.”