A study of the contributions to ophthalmology made by our Society during the last 31 years / by George M. Gould.

  • Gould, George Milbrey, 1848-1922.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A study of the contributions to ophthalmology made by our Society during the last 31 years / by George M. Gould. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    children now struggling for education through pain, ailing little creatures, backward in their lessons, tortured with racking head- aches, who only need relief of a complaining set of nerves by a pair of properly-adjusted glasses to transform them to healthy, happy children, capable of assimilating all the benefits of their school work.” I recently received a letter of indignant protest from one of the most famous of American physicians against a plan I had urged that all children should have their eyes carefully examined by ex- pert oculists. In dentistry it is advisable; in ophthalmology it is specialism and extremism. Dr. John G. Wilson of Montrose, Pa., in the Journal of the American Medical Association, May 19, 1906, thus hits his finger upon another ailing place. As to headaches due to eyestrain he says that “large numbers of school children go to their physician and are given headache remedies without end. This is to no pur- pose, and they finally have to give up school on account of becom- ing nervous wrecks, unless by chance they happen into some jew- elry store and are given some kind of lenses to wear which may relieve the trouble to some extent. The country physician, there- fore, should take up refraction work. The great mass of working- people simply cannot pay the fee demanded by the oculists, and are forced to put up with the indifferent work of the so-called opticians. Two or three hundred dollars will buy the necessary equipment and a month’s work in some eye infirmary will give one a start, and one can do as well at once as any optician will ever be able to do.” As a profession and as specialists we have not raised one finger to prevent or to undo the deep disgrace hinted in these lines. There is not a single adequate, serious school of refraction in the world, nor is there a sign that one is coming. Yet such a school is more needed and would do more good than’ all the ophthalmic depart- ments in all the medical colleges and hospitals of the world. Moreover, there are at least 15,000,000 American children and adults afflicted with lateral curvature of the spine. All the smiles of incredulity will not, alas! lessen the number nor the horror of the consequence of the abnormalism. There is no existing machin- ery, no care or solicitude to prevent the sufferings nor to prevent the very existence of these millions of scoliotics. The defect arises unknown and unsuspected by physicians and by orthopedists. When it is incurable the orthopedist learns of a few of the cases. Surely over 90 per cent, of these scoliotics owe their tragedies to ocular molfunction readily demonstrable and its results always preventable. Two months ago, for example, a child of five years of age was brought to me with many complaints—vomiting of food, peevishness, ill-health generally. A nurse and a physician were retained as constant attendants of the child. I found a grrade ot astigmatism so low that great authorities in this society publicly to the profession and daily to their patients state that it is useless to correct it. Both axes of this astigmatism were 105°—a defect that