NEAR SIGHTEDNESS.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1240, 26 February 1878, Page 3

NEAR SIGHTEDNESS.

> [Fromtho "Globe."] Dr. Loring has been discussing before the New York County Medical Society the very serious question, " Is the human eye gradually changing its form under the influence of modern civilization ?" It has, we know, sometimes been stated that ocular weakness and disease in various forms appear to have been rapidly increasing in recent times. Dr. Loring confirms this opinion, so far, at least, as the infirmity known as short-sightedness is concerned. Constant study incidental to the lives of so many in modern times has, he says a tendency to engender this derangement of the eye, and it is often perpetuated by heredity. Near-sightedness, he says, is a disease of childhood, and rarely developes itself after the fifteenth or eighteenth year. Hence it is that mechanics engaged in very minute work present fewer cases than those whose straining of their eyes has commenced at an earlier period of life than that at which mechanical pursuits are adopted. Dr. Loring has been prosecuting extensive inquiries on the subject. He examined the eyes of 2265 scholars in the New York public schools, and he found that the proportions of those in a healthy condition were 87 per cent, among children under seven years, while between that age and twenty-one the proportion of normal eyes was but Bixty-one. In the young he found the' cases of near-sightedness were 3"5 per cent, of those examined, and 26 per cent, in the elders, the same class presenting in St. Petersburg 13 6 per cent, and 43'3 per cent, respectively. In Konigsberg, Germany, ho found considerably more than half the population were short-sighted. These figures show, he thinks, that near-sightedness increases directly with the age to which schooling is extended. It is more commonly met with, he affirms, among the older eastern cities of America than the new ones of the west. Among the most prominent causes of the disease are, in his opinion, a sedentary life, poor food, bad ventilation, and general disregard of hygienic requirements—all conducting to a laxity of tissue of which nearsightedness is an indication.