The causes of loss of sight shortly stated and explained.

Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The causes of loss of sight shortly stated and explained. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    u requiring almost constant stooping, as shoe¬ making and the like. In poor people, beyond the age of 45, amaurosis may sometimes be attributed to the straining of the sight resulting from the want of spectacles, or the using of bad glasses, or of those of a focus not suitable for their eyes. Hence it has repeatedly been stated by those authors who have written on the preservation of sight, that there could not be a more useful appropri¬ ation of part of the funds of charitable institutions, than that of providing proper spectacles for the poor. Amaurosis generally comes on slowly and insidiously. The early symptoms, such as a sensation of small blackish spots, or shreds of cobwebs, flitting before the patient, are often neglected. No advice is asked till the disease is considerably advanced in its progress, and has taken a seat from whence it is hardly possible, and often quite impossible, to drive it. The darkness thickens day after day, and at length the eyes roll insensible to the piercing1 ray, and find no dawn. Milton thus pathetically laments his state of blindness:— “ With the year Seasons return; but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of ev’n or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom or summer’s rose, Or flocks or herds, or human face divine; But clouds instead, and ever-during dark Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men