WHAT WE ARE COMING TO.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 2088, 15 March 1889, Page 3

WHAT WE ARE COMING TO.

j Ten or fifteen years a^o. the * Standard" remarks, it was tbe rarest thing to see a ohild In spectacles. Now, the notion that glasses belong to tbe aged, or, at any rate, .persons who have reaohed maturity, ia entirely exploded, and tbe father of a family learns, with no speolal astonishment, that the doctor considers tbat Tom or Alice, aged eight or ten, had better at onoe call m the aid of tbe optloian to assist his or her eyesight. The assistantsurgeon to tbo WeaU*rn Ophthalmic Hospital, Mr St Olair Box ton, oalls attention to a state cf thiDgs so serious, and suggests two possible remediei. He doeß not go beyond tbe truth ln saying that the rapid Increase of visual deficiency noticeable by every one moat exolte a fear that the time will come when tbe whole nation will be purblind ; and tbat tie need for oheoking the progress of the scourge is Imperative and Immediate. There are two principal causes of the increase of defeotive vision ; the transmission of bad sight from the parent to the offspring, and the acquisition of bad sight by tbe individual owing to bis reading or otherwise using the eyea under unhealthy conditions. Without a doubt, when the eyes are treated fairly, tbey are atrengthened, not weakened, by work. It ia the abuse of tbe eyes, not their use, whioh Is to be avoided. Those who bave strengthened tbeir eyes by using them properly keep keen sight longer than those who have never trained tbem, Io tbe cue of the man who baa negleoted to give bis eyes tbeir full development, they will fall m power along with his other bodily fonotlona. When, however, the man who, born with good eyea, his kept them m constant hard work, and yet never strained them, reaches old age, be m»y find tbem capable of performing tbelr funotlons better than any other organ of his body.