The Cure of Imperfect Sight By Treatment Without Glasses - CHAPTER XX
- Presbyopia: Its Cause And Cure

[..The first patient that I cured of presbyopia was myself. Having
demonstrated by means of experiments on the eyes of animals that the
lens is not a factor in accommodation, I knew that presbyopia must be
curable, and I realized that I could not look for any very general
acceptance of the revolutionary conclusions I had reached so long as I
wore glasses myself for a condition supposed to be due to the loss of
the accommodative power of the lens. I was then suffering from the
maximum degree of presbyopia. I had no accommodative power whatever,
and had to have quite an outfit of glasses, because with a glass, for
instance, which enabled me to read fine print at thirteen inches, I
could not read it either at twelve inches or at fourteen. The
retinoscope showed that when I tried to see anything at the near-point
without glasses my eyes were focussed for the distance, and when I
tried to see anything at the distance they were focussed for the near-
point. My problem, then, was to find some way of reversing this
condition and inducing my eyes to focus for the point I wished to see
at the moment that I wished to see it.

***
ONLY ONE MAN WHO COULD CURE ME

***

I consulted various eye specialists, but my language was to them like
that of St. Paul to the Greeks, namely, foolishness. "Your lens is as
hard as a stone," they said. "No one can do anything for you." Then I
went to a nerve specialist. He used the retinoscope on me, and
confirmed my own observations as to the peculiar contrariness of my
accommodation; but he had no idea what I could do about it. He would
consult some of his colleagues, he said, and asked me to come back in
a month, which I did. Then he told me he had come to the conclusion
that there was only one man who could cure me, and that was Dr.
William H. Bates of New York.

"Why do you say that?" I asked.

"Because you are the only man who seems to know anything about it," he
answered.

Thus thrown upon my own resources, I was fortunate enough to find a
non-medical gentleman who was willing to do what he could to assist
me, the Rev. R. B. B. Foote, of Brooklyn. He kindly used the
retinoscope through many long and tedious hours while I studied my own
case, and tried to find some way of accommodating when I wanted to
read, instead of when I wanted to see something at the distance. One
day, while looking at a picture of the Rock of Gibraltar which hung on
the wall, I noted some black spots on its face. I imagined that these
spots were the openings of caves, and that there were people in these
caves moving about. When I did this my eyes were focussed for the
reading distance. Then I looked at the same picture at the reading
distance, still imagining that the spots were caves with people in
them. The retinoscope showed that I had accommodated, and I was able
to read the lettering beside the picture. I had, in fact, been
temporarily cured by the use of my imagination. Later I found that
when I imagined the letters black I was able to see them black, and
when I saw them black I was able to distinguish their form. My
progress after this was not what could be called rapid. It was six
months before I could read the newspapers with any kind of comfort,
and a year before I obtained my present accommodative range of
fourteen inches, from four inches to eighteen; but the experience was
extremely valuable, for I had in pronounced form every symptom
subsequently observed in other presbyopic patients.

Fortunately for the patients, it has seldom taken me as long to cure
other people as it did to cure myself. In some cases a complete and
permanent cure was effected in a few minutes. Why, I do not know. I
will never be satisfied till I find out. A patient who had worn
glasses for presbyopia for about twenty years was cured in less than
fifteen minutes by the use of his imagination...]