EYESIGHT AND HEALTH

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18431, 15 March 1922, Page 6

EYESIGHT AND HEALTH

By Elizabeth Hyatt-Woolf. There are few people who can today confess to feeling absolutely well. A number of minor complaints seem to bar the way to perfect health. That constant little ailing with which we are all familiar is a greater trial than a real illness. No doubt it will come as a great surprise to the average man or woman to be told that some slight failing of eyesight is probably the cause of that insidious small trouble, which at times makes life so difficult to endure. Oculists who give time to investigating the health of their patients find out some astonishing facts. The following'stories come from a busy Harley-street specialist. He does not look upon his patients as machines who only need visional corrections and glasses. He endeavours to get behind the nervous temperament. It he meets with opposition to wearing glasses he tries persuasion, and failing this, allows the patient to buy his own experience. THE NEUROTIC CLERGYMAN. His attention, he says, was first drawn to the effect of glasses on nerves by an. American, who consulted him about slight inflammation of one eye. He noticed that this man was wearing glasses, and on examining them he realised that he had a very slight astigmation, one which we do not always bother to correct in this country. Test lenses to discover such a minor fault are, in fact, not usually supplied in England. In answer to the inquiry why he wore glasses, the American replied.— “My doctor over on the other side gave them to me. Before I wore them I was irritable and miserable. Now I have forgotten what nerves are. Of course, 1 can see perfectly without them.” On another occasion a very neurotic clergyman, who on account of health had resigned his living, called on his oculist. He opposed everything he was told, declared his sight was perfect, and went off with a prescription for glasses which the doctor felt certain he would never have made up. To his great surprise, however, four months afterwards, the parson turned up accompanied by his wife. She was the patient

this time, and eventually told how, afted much trouble, she had persuaded her husband to try the glasses, with the most miraculous results. His condition of health had so much improved that he had gone back to the Church and was doing better work than ever. TEMPER. A case of perhaps greater interest is one connected with digestion. The patient, a lady, was given glasses to wear always. The oculist did not ask her any health questions, because she was not in a confidential frame of mind. Two years afterwards she appeared again, and opened the conversation with: “My sight seems excellent, but I feel sure I need a change in my glasses. You see, when I came to you last time I was suffering very badly from nervous dyspepsia. From the first week I wore your glasses until last week I have not had any trouble at all. The dyspepsia has begun again, so I am now sure my eyes are the cause.” Wearing glasses may even cure the temper. A small boy was taken to Harley-street for attention to his eyes He was given glasses to wear always, and for two years nothing more was heard of him Then the mother decided on a fresh consultation in case he needed change. In the course of a little talk she asked the oculist whether it was possible that wearing glasses could have cured the boy’s temper “When I first brought him to you,” she said, “he had a dreadful temper Now he is hardly ever irritable.” There are many more stories like these, and they all prove that the slightest error in vision may be causing much unhappiness. So if you have some tiresome little complaint, or nerves, or suffer from neuralgia, consult somebody about your eyes, but most of all somebody who is sympathetic