EYE AND EAR AND HEALTH

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 128, 1 June 1935, Page 8

EYE AND EAR AND HEALTH

When the science of public hygiene developed, with the aid of laws on drainage, sanitation, etc., a great new field of preventive medicine was opened. Doctors helped greatly a movement the effect of "Much must be to reduce their private business; with their assistance, diseases like typhoid fever were routed. The question now arises whether a new campaign of preventive medicine will be set up in relation to those matters that offend directly the eye and the ear, and, indirectly, the j nerves and the general health. If ' there are qualities and intensities of light that hurt, the eye, and noises /that assault the ear, and if these j things are eradicable by means of laws, bylaws, altered practices in building, lighting, acoustics, etc., is not a campaign in this direction as promising as the sanitation campaign of a generation ago proved to be? Now, as then, the campaign would have to be educational, and scientifically based. It would need the unselfish help of the specialists just as the sanitation campaign needed the doctors. These thoughts arise on noting the cooperative effort in Sydney of the Institute of Optometrists and the Illuminating Engineering Society of Australia. It is published that members of the optometrical and illuminating professions are now investigating the problems associated with the provision of better lighting, with a view to reducing eye strain among office workers. Advances have been made in the construction of buildings to provide a greater amount of natural light.

Even higher than the art of curing the ills of humanity, is the'art of preventing them. A race of people is no stronger, physically and mentally, than the standard of its eyes and ears permits. I