The Eye in its Relation to Health
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By Chalmer Prentice, M.D.
Chicago, A.C. McClurg & Company, 1895
Transcription (c) A. Wik, 2004

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        | Chapter I |  pages 7-16
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A CRITIC is one who is skilled in judging of
the merits of a work.  He must be a con-
noisseur; he must be an adept, before he is able
to pass judgment of high value.
  In this work many ideas are set forth that are
entirely new.  Many tests are suggested that
may seem strange, and results recorded that
appear incredible, but the value of these tests can
not be determined without thorough investiga-
tion.  Viewed from the standpoint of our earlier
professional teaching and experience, the position
I assume may seem to be wrong; yet careful in-
vestigation as directed in this work will perhaps
prove that new methods will produce new results.
Some months or even a year and more ought to
be spent in the experiments suggested in this
work, for many of the changes sought are, at the
best, slow, and the conditions with which we deal
are at times obstinate and deceptive.
  After investigation, I invite criticism.  "Truth

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is mighty and will prevail."  This is the one sus-
taining thought to one who presents anything
new to the world; and for appreciative and valu-
able criticism of this work I turn to those only
who are possessed of careful, discriminating,
strong, individual judgment, and whose conclu-
sions are always based on a thorough investiga-
tion of facts.
  However extensive the experience of any
oculist may have been, I do not expect from him
full concurrence in my opinions as a result of
that experience; and any judgment from that
plane I shall deem in a great measure unfair; but
from such a source, after careful consideration of
the methods I have suggested, I do expect con-
currence, or at least, fair criticism.
  A perfect judgment can not be fairly arrived
at by reading only a part of this work, for ques-
tions might suggest themselves on one page which
would be satisfactorily answered by a continuous
and careful perusal of all the pages.
  A subject like the present, pointing toward
advancement in the field of medicine, is too
sacred to be trifled with by casual and inexperi-
enced criticism; but all honest inquiry regarding
my methods I will cheerfully answer, hoping
thereby to advance medical science.
  I fully realize that many of the following
statements may seem incredible; but they can all

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be practically demonstrated by carefully con-
ducted tests in any suitable clinic, which is the
only place in which to decide a question of so
important a nature.  Under suitable conditions,
I shall be pleased to make these tests at any time.
  There seems to be little, if anything, left to
discover concerning the laws of refraction in their
application to defective vision.  Helmholtz, Don-
ders, Landolt and many others seems to have
solved nearly every problem in matters of refrac-
tion and the application of glasses for correction
of the same.  Many ingenious methods have
found their way into use for determining, both by
objective and subjective examinations, the arti-
ficial aids to produce the most perfect vision.
The acquisitions in this field are the result of many
years of careful investigation, through all of which
the tacit assumption has been, that, when the eye
was so corrected and the function of vision at
once more easily and perfectly performed, all that
could be desired had been accomplished.  Here
is exactly where the greatest error has existed;
and it has lain so deeply hidden that it is not en-
tirely strange that it has remained so long undis-
covered.  What misled us to the greatest extent
was that, when the function of vision was perfectly
performed, we rested in the belief that the eye was
perfect; but it did not occur to us that some eyes
might be using an excessive amount of nerve-

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impulse to bring about and sustain that perfect
vision.
  Long years of effort are made by defective
eyes to perform the function of vision as perfectly
as possible.  When necessary, the nerve-centers
innervate to their utmost power the various eye
muscles, causing a change of shape in the crys-
talline lens, stretching muscles which were too
short and shortening muscles which were too
long, to enable the eyes to look in the same
direction.  These conditions are continued, and
more or less sustained, from day to day through a
period of many years.  Thus anatomical parts
that were manifestly imperfect at birth meet
with changes in shape that become more or less
established, so that it is impossible at once to
discover and correct the same by fitting such
glasses as produce the most perfect vision.  Such
a procedure is often incorrect, inasmuch as it
stimulates the maintainance of abnormal condi-
tions that, as soon as possible, ought to be dis-
covered and corrected.  When all the facts are
carefully considered, we can readily see that we
may have more or less firmly fixed conditions,
which will only recede gradually and thus permit
the eye slowly to assume a normal state.
  In a slight measure, the discovery of the ac-
tion of atropine, hyoscyamine, and similar drugs
on the eye, has taught us that the first manifest

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conditions that present themselves to us in latent
hypermetropia are not what they seem.  For in-
stance, a spasm in the ciliary muscle often hides
a great measure of defect, making the eye
appear more perfect than it really is.  Similar
hiding power may exist in any of the other ocular
muscles and deceive us as to their true conditions.
It is for this reason that many people experience
great and repeated trouble in their endeavors to
have their vision properly corrected.  They pass
on and on from one professional man to another,
receiving from each a correction that proves but
temporary; and yet it is probable that each cor-
rection was made scientifically and fulfilled all
needs that the eyes manifested at the time of each
examination.  Every oculist has had his trouble-
some cases of this kind.
  The reason why greater uniformity of opinion
has not existed concerning treatment through the
sight centers, is that our observations have been
confined to more or less manifest defects, and
these at best represent but a very small percent-
age of the disturbing conditions that may exist in
the ocular apparatus.  Defective eye muscles,
which tend to cause the eyes to deviate from a
normal position, were tested by various methods
leading to destroy the fusion stimulus; but these
methods discover only a very small percentage of
the existing abnormal conditions.  The great ma-

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jority of disturbing causes are not to be found in
manifest defects of muscle balance.  Some of the
most serious conditions exist where the muscle
balance is apparently perfect, the defect being a
fixed abnormal innervation which is sustaining a
perfect position of the eyes, and which continues
to maintain it under all tests that rely on the
artificial disturbance of fusion power (diffusion
tests).
  Further than this, in a large share of those
cases where the deviations are manifest, the eyes
are turned in exactly the opposite direction to
that in which anatomically short muscles would
turn them.  For instance, a right eye with a short
superior muscle, instead of being drawn upward,
might tend downward to a considerable extent by
the force of spasm.  The nerve-impulse sent to
the inferior muscle to enable it to hold the eye
down level with its fellow, becomes, through re-
sulting irritation, more than is necessary, and pulls
the eye down beyond a balance; so that the op-
posite eye will be the higher of the two under the
diffusion test, because the abnormal impulse is
permanent.  It can readily be seen that the usual
correction of an eye manifesting this reverse con-
dition would prove injurious instead of beneficial.
I have spoken at length elsewhere on this class
of cases; adverse results in them are strong rea-
sons why we have not attained a more general

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success.  Such results have failed to make the
treatment impressive, and from the very nature of
these cases as set forth in this work, it will be seen
how unreliable any and all of such tests are,
however complete and perfect their destruction of
fusion power may be.
  Again, eyes that are capable of prominently
manifesting their defects are more or less at rest
when not in constant use, whereas absolutely la-
tent eye troubles find no such periods of relief.  It
is from the latter and the reverse class that the
most serious nervous disturbances take their rise.
The correction of MUSCULAR INSUFFICIENCY or man-
ifest irregularity must not be confounded with the
idea of REPRESSING ABNORMAL INNERVATION.  One
is not a modification of the other, nor do they
bear the slightest resemblance to each other,
though both methods of treatment are through
the medium of the eyes; and it would be as fool-
ish to confound them with each other for this
reason as it would be to confound various schools
of medicine because the remedies are applied
through the medium of the mouth.
  Eye-strain, or excessive abnormal innervation
of the eye muscles, depletes the nerve-centers.
It also gives rise to brain irritation of varying
degrees.  Dispositions are altered by it; char-
acter is forcibly changed; mental faculties are
impelled into channels of work that are anoma-

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lous.  Into such an altered state these conditions
may force a being as to make him appear to the
world an entirely different character from what
he otherwise would have been.  So, if in time
these disturbing conditions can be corrected, we
may expect to see favorable changes in the
physical, mental and moral parts of the indi-
vidual.
  Some very remarkable cures have followed
the correction of defects in and about the eyes;
in fact, so wonderful have some of these changes
been, that to the novice it seemed absolutely in-
credible that anything in connection with the eye
could have been the real cause of the change; and,
naturally, he turned in some other direction to
account for the facts which were too stubborn to
be denied.  Generally what is called "mental-
suggestion," in some of its forms, has been settled
upon as the cause of these changes.  Some per-
sons have more or less belief in the efficacy of
suggestion, or they would not turn to it as such a
potent cause; but suggestion as a curative power
has been known under various names for ages.
Gasner, a priest of Bavaria, was said to have
worked some remarkable cures by laying on of
hands.  Hell, of Austria, claimed a wonderful
healing potency in the magnet.  Mesmer took
his cue from the preceding claimant, and evolved
what has been known for a century as mesmer-

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ism.  About the close of the last century, the
French Academy appointed a commission to in-
vestigate the principles involved in Mesmer's
work.  Benjamin Franklin was a member of that
commission.  The decision arrived at was, that
whatever effects were produced were of a tempor-
ary character, and due entirely to suggestion.
Hypnotism and braidism are simply other names
for practically the same influence.  There are
other methods of more modern birth that owe
whatever efficacy they possess to suggestion.  I
think all careful observers are ready to admit
that there is considerable influence in suggestion,
both for good and for evil, especially on weak,
nervous people.  The evil effect will prove the
greater and more lasting of the two.
  However potent suggestion may be, it has
never been an aid to curative results through the
medium of the eye; on the contrary, it has been
the most detrimental element in the way of its
advancement.  Suggestion is more effective in
the shape of ridicule than any other form of its
administration, for it is easier to depress than to
elevate a failing life; and such we have frequently
seen sacrificed to the potent evil influence of sug-
gestion.  The strongest evidence of the true value
of treatment through the eye is the fact that
it has made all of its advancement through a
storm of opposition and ridicule, the only argu-

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ments of the unenlightened.  Suggestion cannot be
said to have had any influence in lunacy and other
states of lost minds that have been influenced and
restored by eye treatment.  Prisms in a certain
position often relieve pain, and when reversed in-
crease it; yet the suggestion is equally potent in
either position.
  It is common and natural to cling to a belief
in things and methods that have long been estab-
lished, and in which leading men and authors
concur; and, if the results of such following are
universally perfect, more cannot be desired.  But,
when they fall far short of satisfaction, we are
warranted and even impelled to search outside of
established authority for the aid that it fails to
give; otherwise, science and art would never
advance.




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        | End of Chapter I |  pages 7-16
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