Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/65

Rh Myopy is seldom congenital. All experts remark that it is rarely found in children of less than five years of age. All agree likewise that it arises from a too steady application of the eyes to close objects, especially during the school age. The attention of the authorities in Baden was directed to this fact forty years ago, by the number of students in the gymnasia who wore spectacles. Their inquiries were followed up by Dr. Szokalsky in Paris. Professor C. von Jäger, of Vienna, in 1861, was the first person who made a systematic examination of the eyes of children in reference to this point. Out of two hundred children, he found fifty-five per cent. of those in an orphan house, and eighty per cent. of the pupils in a private school, to be short-sighted. He did not, however, consider his investigation extended enough to justify his drawing a general conclusion.

I began in 1865 to examine the school-children of my native city, and believed, after I had gone through thirty-three schools of all grades, up to the gymnasium, containing 10,060 children, that I was justified in announcing the three following laws: 1. Short-sightedness hardly exists in the village schools—the number of cases increases steadily with the increasing demands which the schools make upon the eyes, and reaches the highest point in the gymnasia; 2. The number of short-sighted scholars rises regularly from the lowest to the highest classes in all institutions; 3. The average degree of myopy increases from class to class—that is, the short-sighted become more so.

My investigations have been repeated in many cities of Europe and America, and my conclusions have been everywhere confirmed. I may cite the examinations of Dr. Thilenius at Rostock in 1868; of Dr. Schultz at Upsala in 1870; of Dr. Crismann at St. Petersburg, and Dr. Maklakoff at Moscow, in 1871; of Dr. Krüger at Frankfort, and Herr von Hoffmann at Wiesbaden, in 1873; of Dr. A. von Reuss in Vienna, Dr. Ott and Dr. Ritzmann in Shaffhausen, Dr. Burgl in Munich, and Professor Dor in Bern, in 1874; of Dr. Conrad in Königsberg in 1875, of Dr. Scheiding in Erlangen, Dr. Koppe in Dorpat, Professor Pflüger in Lucerne, and Drs. Loring and Derby in New York, in 1876; of Dr. Emmert in Bern, Drs. Kotelmann and Classen in Hamburg, Professor Becker in Heidelberg, Drs. William, Agnew, and Derby, in Cincinnati, New York, and Boston, in 1877; Dr. Niemann in Magdeburg, Dr. Seggle in Munich, Professor Dor in Lyons, Dr. Haenel in Dresden, and Dr. Reich in Tiflis, in 1878; Dr. Just in Zittau, and Dr. Florschutz in Coburg, in 1879. We have in all more than thirty accurate reports of competent oculists, giving the results of the most careful investigations among more than forty thousand scholars.

The final results of all these observations, when combined, show, that in the village schools hardly one per cent., in the elementary schools five to eleven per cent., in the girls' schools ten to twenty-four per cent., in the real schools twenty to forty per cent., and in the