Neil Brooks,

Subject: Reasons for Orthodox Disapproval & Charlatanism

"True.  I should have consulted you and your peers to find a quack.
Next time ... I promise."

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First Questions

You are no doubt already wondering: "What is the Bates method, and if
it is so marvelous why haven't I heard about it before?"

Briefly, the method is a way of re-educating the eyesight. Errors of
refraction (that is, of focusing) are regarded as temporary regulatory
powers of the body, can be reduced in severity or eliminated
altogether.

As to why you haven't heard about it before, there are several
reasons. The first and most important is the attitude of the medical
profession. In our culture we have come to rely too heavily on the
theoretical approach to medicine. No cure can be truly acceptable
unless and until there is a theory to explain it. The theory
accounting for refractive error is the work of the German scientist
Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-94), whose contribution to the study of
the nervous system still dominates modern thinking. Helmholtz's theory
states that the eye accommodates (changes focus for far and near
objects) by means of changes in the shape of the lens. If the lens or
its muscle system is faulty, or if the eyeball is congenitally
malformed, then refractive errors will arise. Although there is now
even some controversy over the exact mechanism by which the lens
changes its shape, orthodox science has never questioned the basic
tenet of the Helmholtz theory: that it is the lens which is solely
responsible for changing the focal length of the eye.

The theory is eminently reasonable. It seems to be borne out by the
anatomy of the eye. Among older people, who progressively lose
elasticity of the lens, refractive error is assumed to be an
inevitable concomitant of the passing years, so much so that graphs
have been drawn showing loss of accommodation with increasing age.
Furthermore it is actually possible to see changes in the curvature of
the lens: reflections in the front and back surfaces may be observed
by using a small flashlight. These Purkinje images, as they are
called, are taken as the next best thing to observing the act of
accommodation in a cross-sectioned living eye. And, as further
evidence in support of the Helmholtz theory, science would cite the
apparent case with which glasses correct optical errors.

Another serious obstacle to acceptance of the Bates method was the
personality of W.H. Bates himself. Having found empirically that the
Helmholtz theory was lacking, he was far too quick to formulate a
rival theory. Bates's proposal was that the eye accommodates, not by a
change in the shape of the lens, but by a change in the shape of the
eyeball itself, this change being brought about by the six extrinsic
muscles which control the movement of the eye in its socket. Such an
idea was rejected as nonsense, the more so when Bates adduced less-
than-convincing evidence in some of his scientific papers dealing with
accommodation in professional hostility. His insights into the
psychology of vision were ignored, as were the successes he achieved
in his consulting room.These successes convinced him he was right and
his colleagues wrong; he became more and more exasperated, and the
dogmatic tone of his *Perfect Sight Without Glasses* verges, in
places, on the aggressive. This did little to win over his critics.

The Bates method was served no better by some of the people who set
themselves up as teachers. For every conscientious teacher of the
method there were several who understood nothing whatever about it and
saw in it only a means of exploiting the desperate patients whom
orthodoxy had failed. In consequence, any suggestion that there might
be something in visual re-education is now dismissed as outright
quackery.

This attitude of the opthalmic profession has perhaps, in part,
consciously or otherwise, been influenced by another consideration.
Although by no means all members of the profession profit from the
trade in glasses, there is no question but that there is a huge vested
interest in the correctness of the Helmholtz theory.

Yet another obstacle stands in the way of the Bates method. It is so
easy for the instant solution that few people give the method a fair
chance. The person who has improved his or her vision is such a rarity
that few opticians will have encountered any evidence that the method
works. Those cases that have come to light have certainly been
explained as examples of anomalous but spontaneous improvement which
would have happened anyway.

The final obstacle to acceptance of the method is the curious nature
of refractive errors and the perpetuating effect that glasses have on
them. Glasses tend to fix and make permanent errors that would
otherwise, in time, correct themselves. The longer glasses are worn,
the more intransigent the errors become, and the less believable it
becomes that they could ever be cured.

And yet, despite all these difficulties, the method persists. It
enjoyed special popularity in the 1930s and 1940s, particularly after
its enthusiastic endorsement by the writer Aldous Huxley, whose book
on the method, *The Art of Seeing* (Chatto and Windus, 1943), has
rarely been out of print since. There have been other books too, of
varying quality. In one of the better ones, published in 1957, the
Bates teacher C.A. Hackett analyzes the results of 10 years' work in
which she treated 2180 cases of refractive error. Of these, over 75
percent achieved lasting improvement, of whom about 45 per cent (over
a third of all students) were able to do without their glasses
entirely.

It is my hope - even conviction - that future generations will regard
the wholesale dispensing of glasses as yet another pitiable example of
a misguided fashion in medicine, as quaint as wholesale bloodletting
or trepanning, and almost as barbarous.

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- Jonathon Barnes

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A Method of Visual Re-Education

In the early years of the 20th century Dr W.H. Bates, a New York
oculist, became dissatisfied with the ordinary symptomatic treatment
of eyes. Seeking a substitute for artificial lenses, he set himself to
discover if there was any way of re-educating defective vision into a
condition of normality.

As a result of his work with a large number of patients he came to the
conclusion that the great majority of visual defects were functional
and due to faulty habits of use. These faulty habits of use were
invariably related, he found, to a condition of strain and tension. As
was to be expected from the unitary nature of the human organism,
strain affected both the body and the mind.

Dr. Bates discovered that, by means of appropriate techniques, this
condition of strain could be relieved. When it had been relieved -
when patient had learnt to use their eyes and mind in a relaxed way -
vision was improved and refractive errors tended to correct
themselves. Practice in the educational techniques served to build up
good seeing habits in place of the faulty habits responsible for
defective vision, and in many cases function came to be completely and
permanently normalized.

Now, it is a well-established physiological principle that improved
functioning always tends to result in an improvement in the organic
condition of the tissues involved. The eye, Dr. Bates discovered, was
no exception to this general rule. When the patient learn to relax his
tenseness and acquired proper seeing habits, the *vis medicatrix
naturae* was given a chance to operate - with the result that, in many
cases, the improvement of functioning was followed by a complete
restoration of the health and organic integrity of the diseased eye.

Dr Bates died in 1931, and up to this time of his death he continued
to perfect and develop his methods for the improvement of visual
function. Furthermore, during the last years of Dr Bates' life and
since his death, his pupils, in various parts of the world, have
developed a number of valuable new applications of the general
principles which he laid down. By means of these techniques large
number of men, women and children, suffering from visual defects of
every kind, have successfully re-educated into normality or towards
normality. For anyone who has studies a selection of these cases, or
who has himself undergone the process of visual re-education, it is
impossible to doubt that here at last is a method of treating
imperfect sight which is not merely symptomatic, but genuinely
aetiological - a method which does not confine itself to the
mechanical neutralization of defects but aims at the removal of their
physiological and psychological causes. And yet, in spite of the long
period during which it has been known, in spite of the quality and
quantity of the results obtained through its employment by competent
instructors. Dr Bates' own technique still remains unrecognized by the
medical and optometrical professions. It is, I think, worth while,
before going any further, to enumerate and discuss the principal
reasons for this, to my mind, deplorable state of things.

Reasons for Orthodox Disapproval

In the first place, the very fact that the method is unrecognized and
lies outside the pale of orthodoxy is a sufficient invitation to the
petty adventurers and charlatans who hang upon the skirts of society,
ever ready and eager to take advantage of human suffering. There
exist, scattered about the world, some scores or perhaps hundreds of
well-trained and thoroughly conscientious teachers of Dr Bates'
method. But there are also, unfortunately, a number of ignorant and
unscrupulous quacks, who know little more of the system that its
name.The fact is deplorable, but not at all surprising. The number of
those who fail to obtain relief from the current symptomatic treatment
of visual defect is considerable, and the Bates Method has a high
reputation for effectiveness in such cases. Moreover, the technique is
unorthodox, therefore no standards of competence are legally imposed
upon its teachers. A large potential clientèle, a desperate need of
help, and no questions asked as to knowledge, character and ability!
These are the ideal conditions for the practice of charlatanism. What
wonder, then, if certain unscrupulous people have taken advantage of
the opportunities thus offered? But because *some* unorthodox
practitioners are charlatans, it does not logically follow that *all*
must be. I repeat that it does not logically follow; but, alas, as the
history of almost any professional group clearly demonstrates,
orthodox opinion would always very much like it to follow. That is one
of the reasons why, in this particular case, the unwarranted
assumption that the whole business is mere quackery is widely
accepted, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. The cure for
charlatanism is not the suppression of an intrinsically sound method,
but proper education for, and control of, its teachers. Proper
education and control are equally the cure for that licensed
charlatanism among opticians, which has been described and denounced
in articles appearing in *The Reader's Digest* (1937) and the New York
*World-Telegram* (1942).

The second reason for the non-acceptance of the method may be summed
up in three words: habit, authority and professionalism. The
symptomatic treatment of defective sight has been going on for a long
time, has been carried to a high degree of perfection, and within its
limitations, is reasonably successful. If it fails in a certain
proportion of cases to provide even adequate palliation of the
symptoms, that is nobody's fault, but a condition inherent in the
nature of things. For years, the highest medical authorities have all
asserted this to be the case - and who will venture to question a
recognized authority?

Certainly not the members of the profession to which the authority
belongs. Every guild and trade has its own *esprit de corps*, its
private patriotism, which makes it resent all rebellion from within
and all competition or criticism from without.

Next there is the matter of vested interest. The manufacture of
optical glass is now a considerable industry, and its retail sale, a
profitable branch of commerce, to which access can be had only be
persons who have had a special technical training. That there should
be, among these licensed persons, a strong dislike to any new
technique, which threatens to make the use of optical glass
unnecessary, is only natural. (It is perhaps, worth remarking that,
even if the value of Dr Bates' techniques were generally recognized,
there would be small likelihood of any immediate or considerable
decline in the consumption of optical glass. Visual re-education
demands from the pupil a certain amount of thought, time and trouble.
But thought, time and trouble are precisely what the overwhelming
majority of men and women are not prepared to give, unless motivated
by a passionate desire or an imperious need. Most of those who can get
along more a less satisfactorily with the help of mechanical seeing-
aids, will continue to do so, even when they know that there exists a
system of training which would make it possible for them, not merely
to palliate symptoms, but actually get rid of the causes of visual
defect. So long as the art of seeing is not taught to children as a
part of their normal education, the trade in artificial lenses is not
likely to suffer more than a trifling loss by reason of the official
recognition of the new technique. Human sloth and inertia will
guarantee the opticians at least nine-tenths of their present
business.)

Another reason for the orthodox attitude in this matter is of a
strictly empirical nature. Oculists and optometrists affirm that they
have never witnessed the phenomena of self-regulation and cure
described by Bates and his followers. therefore they conclude that
such phenomena never take place. In this syllogism the premises are
true, but the conclusion is unsound. It is quite true that oculists
and optometrists have never observed such phenomena as are described
by Bates and his followers. But this is because they have never had
any dealing with patients who had learned to use their organs of
vision in a relaxed, unstrained way. So long as the organs of vision
are used under a condition of mental and physical tension, the *vis
medicatrix naturae* will not manifest itself, and the visual defects
will persist, or actually become worse. Oculists and optometrists will
observe the phenomena described by Bates as soon as they relieve the
strain in their patients' eyes by means of Bates's method of visual
education. Because the phenomena cannot occur under the conditions
imposed by orthodox practitioners, it does not follow that they will
not occur when these conditions are changed, so that the healing
powers of the organism are no longer hindered, but given free play.

To this empirical reason for rejecting the Batesian technique must be
added one more - this time in the realm of theory. In the course of
his practice as an oculist, Dr Bates came to doubt the truth of the
currently accepted hypothesis regarding the eye's power of
accommodation to near and distant vision. This matter was for long the
subject of heated debate, until finally, a couple of generations ago,
orthodox medical opinion decided in favor of the Helmholtz hypothesis,
which attributes the eye's power of accommodation to the action of the
ciliary muscle upon the lens. Working with cases of defective vision,
Dr Bates observed a number of facts which the Helmholtz theory seemed
powerless to explain. After numerous experiments on animals and human
beings, he came to the conclusion that the principal factor in
accommodation was not the lens, but the extrinsic muscles of the
eyeball, and that was the focusing of the eye for near and distant
objects was accomplished by the lengthening and shortening of the
globe as a whole. The papers describing his experiments were printed
in various medical journals at the time, and have been summarized in
the opening chapters of his book, *Perfect Sight Without Glasses*
(see: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Perfect_Sight_Without_Glasses ).

Whether Dr. Bates was right or wrong in his rejection of the Helmholtz
theory of accommodation, I am entirely unqualified to say. My own
guess, after reading the evidence, would be that both the extrinsic
muscles and the lens play their part in accommodation.

This guess may be correct, or it may be incorrect. I do not greatly
care. For my concern is not with the anatomical mechanism of
accommodation, but with the art of seeing - and the art of seeing does
not stand or fall with any particular physiological hypothesis.
Believing that Bates' theory of accommodation was untrue, the orthodox
have concluded that his technique of visual education must be unsound.
Once again this is an unwarranted conclusion, due to a failure to
understand the nature of an art, or psycho-physical skill.

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- Aldous Huxley, The Art of Seeing, Ch.2, Pg 6-11

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Thank you for taking the time to read my post.

Warm regards,

-Revival

Didn't you say you came here to learn?

"Billions and billions."

Got any objective, verifiable, evidence of these people improving
their vision (other than relieving accommodative spasm, which--as I've
said countless times--can be done safely, quickly, and easily with
periocular warming?

If not, then you're still spouting uncorroborated, anecdotal crap.
This just isn't the newsgroup for that.  Why can't you, Otis, or your
12 year old sibling understand that??

There are a dozen other venues that are geared toward alternative/
natural vision improvement.  Why must you troll here?

Would you please stop making replies like this? It's tiresome to read on
a newsgroup. Your 12 year old brother appears to be using the same
handle as you, and it would also explain the "text speak" that he uses.
I advise you get your own handle.

Yes, this is why I said it is impossible to get an answer out of Otis.
You'll notice I used Otis's name specifically. However, I see you've
just gone off on a tangent yourself, replying to something I havent said
about yourself. So perhaps you and Otis are not that dissimilar?

No, but people like you and Otis (Ok, maybe not you) postulate as if you
did.

Now, can you convince Otis? Even if he just suggests "talk about this
second opinion with your Doctor". Of course, Otis's response will be,
Doctor doesn't know anything, it's all a conspiracy. Woooo... Follow
me.... Follow me to enlightenment or be damned forever, your children
deserve to have their eyes gouged out and never to see again if you
follow the "majority opinion" "minus lens".

That's OK, Im not net police. I make enough of my own mistakes and I
deplore those who resort to those tactics, no matter how fun it might be.

Truth? What truth? Does one size really fit all? Your methods I gather
are that of the great, Horatio "quack" Bates? How do you know your
advice will work, that there isn't something more? The likes of you and
Otis are those that will stop someone going to a doctor, or an optician,
and even finding potentially serious conditions.

Well prevantitive would involve wearing the plus before  becoming myopic
to prevent myopia. At least in Otis's fantasy. Clearly this isn't true
for everybody as even I, as a computer programmer, held back from myopia
for a good what, ooh, twenty years?

Hold on? Havent I seen you defending Otis? Apologies if that wasn't you?
Maybe it was your younger 12 year old brother. How old are you then? 13? 15?

No no... Just proving that you don't care about science, or medicine,
don't care about any possible underlying factors, and possibly like
Otis, don't care about the many many tests and physical and mental
phenomena present in eye issues... as long as you can sell your palming,
your books, your plus lenses, you couldn't give a crap.

Does yours or Otis's expertise stretch to advising me on my issue?

I've been for MRI's, electrical tests for migraine, worth 4 dot tests,
bagolini tests, maddox red line tests etc etc etc.

Know what those are?

Cya
Simon

Dear PClark,

Subject: your querulous queries

Although, as a matter of "course," I NEVER "question my OWN
faith," I will entertain a few of YOUR inquiries below.

My nephew, Keith.  

I convinced his "mother" that he should wear
the plus lens (at the threshold) and NOT wear the wretched
minus.

He is now in his "fifth decade" and has 20/20 uncorrected vision.

He is also an accomplished athlete and personal trainer, all of
which can be "attributed" to avoiding that first minus lens.

I shall do my best.

I wrote a book (that I, of necessity, self-published.  No
reputable publisher would come within a mile of it) about the
wonders of the plus lens and the evils of the minus lens.

The mere "act" of having WRITTEN that book renders me
highly qualified in this area.

They lack the requisite "personal resolve."

My niece is another example of this weak-willed, spineless, character-
lacking sort who just "didn't have" what it "takes."

See above.  They are as feckless as my niece, Joy Benson.

I can safely assume that this study was flawed.

It is safe to assume that this study, too, is flawed.

Do you FAIL to SEE the pattern here?  Whenever you encounter
a study whose "conclusions" are at variance with mine, then you
have encountered a flawed study.

As always, enjoy our pleasant conversation about the behavior of
the fundamental natural eye.

Best,

Odis
Escapee