Page:Theory and Practice of Handwriting.djvu/175

Rh It is my firm conviction that Vertical Writing when generally introduced does not burden the teachers, as many believe, with a new and difficult work, but on the contrary quite materially lightens for them the very heavy and rather thankless labour of constant exhortations to a better bodily posture, and gains them time and strength for working at their principal task, education and instruction. I trust that a not too distant future will confirm this prophecy.

 examined a Board School in London and found therein among 267 scholars, 73, or 27.3 per cent, with sub-normal vision.

The (Philadelphia) Report explains that while some of the classes in the primary and secondary schools had had hygienic surroundings and in the grammar schools the arrangements were not of the best, in the normal schools the greatest possible care had been given to the lighting and seating of the classrooms with the result of making them as nearly perfect as possible in the present state of our knowledge of the requirements. Yet in spite of this and of the fact that the pupils were much older and therefore less susceptible to unfavourable circumstances “The showing for myopic eyes was almost as bad as in the lower schools.”

(R. Brudenell Carter F. R. C. S., Ophthalmic Surgeon to St. George’s Hospital–Medical Times and Gazette, April 25 and May 2, 1885.)

Shortsightedness is developed almost exclusively during School-life; rarely afterwards and very rarely before that time. Is this coincidence of time accidental?–i. e. does the shortsightedness arise at the period about which children go to school? or has school-life caused the shortsightedness? Statistical enquiries prove the latter to be the case.

The well-known orthopædic surgeon Eulenburg also states that 90 per cent of curvatures of the spine which do not arise from a special disease are developed during school-life.

These statements have particularly struck me as coinciding exactly with the period of the development of shortsightedness and I have paid the more attention to this relation between spinal curvature and shortsightedness as they seem to form a circulus vitiosus in so far as shortsightedness produces spinal curvature, and curvature favours shortsightedness. 