BLINDNESS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 254, 24 September 1935, Page 2

BLINDNESS.

MEDICAL DEFINITIONS. The layman is not likely to devote thought to the question, “When is a person blind?” Optbalmologists, or eye doctors, found the question one of absorbing interest at the B.M.A. Conference in Melbourne. The president (Sir James Barrett), in a paper on “The Causes of Blindness,” said that the congress held in Hobart in 1934 had agreed that blindness meant inability to count fingers at a distance of one metre in any circumstancse. Sir James Barrett pointed out that between blindness and vision so defective that it was not possible for the person affected to follow any occupation there was a considerable gap. The Hobart congress agreed that partial blindness —or, as it was now better recalled, partial sightedness —was the possession of vision of six-sixtieths in any cncumstances. , The problem of educating partially sighted children or children of ly defective vision was a very difficult one, Sir James Barrett, said, especially where the child was suffering from myopia (shortsightedness), a disease which often progressed unfavourably. Sir James Barrett then suggested for consideration the following: (1) Jhe education of such children, not in special schools, blit in special classes in an ordinary school as it was clearly not the province of Blind Institutes to undertake their education; (2) the provision in these classes of good illumination and suitable print; (3) the arrangement of special games for them; (4) consideration of the part the cinema and the phonograph might play in their education. Several members read papers on the medical aspects of glaucoma., a wide-ly-spread disease which causes considerable loss of vision. It was emphasised that success in treating the disease depended on its curly, recognition, and that this could be done only by a doctor trained in ophthalmology.