Subject:  Is Dr. Bates, right or wrong?  About the
effect of a minus on the natural eye?

    Science is never merely knowledge; it is orderly knowledge.

                    Josiah Royce

    Arguments are to be avoided.  They are always vulgar -- and
often convincing.

                    Oscar Wilde

    This is Dr.  Bates' statement about his reason for his
opposing the use of a minus lens on an eye that is slightly
nearsighted.

    I believe that the parents should be aware of the proven
effect that the minus lens has on the refractive state of the
eye, as stated by Dr.  Bates.

    It is intellectually short-sighted continue to deny the
proven effect that a minus lens has on the natural eye's
refractive STATE -- as a scientific concept.

   Objection to the over-prescribed minus -- is the
second-opinion.

_______________________________________________

        From Chapter 8 by Dr. Bates

          (Clarifying statement added -- minus lens)

    ...That (minus-lens) glasses must injure the eye is evident
from the facts given in the preceding chapter.  One cannot see
through them unless one produces the degree of refractive error
which they are designed to correct.

    But refractive errors, in the eye which is left to itself,
are never constant.  If one secures good vision by the aid of
concave, lenses, therefore, it means that one is maintaining
constantly a degree of refractive error which otherwise would not
be maintained constantly.  It is only to be expected that this
should make the condition worse, and it is a matter of common
experience that it does.

    After people once begin to wear (minus-lens) glasses their
strength, in most cases, has to be steadily increased in order to
maintain the degree of visual acuity secured by the aid of the
first pair...

    A person with myopia of 20/70 who puts on glasses giving him
a vision of 20/20 may find that in a week's time his unaided
vision has declined to 20/200.

    We have the testimony of Dr.  Sidler-Huguenin, of Zurich,
that of the thousands of myopes treated by him the majority grew
steadily worse, in spite of all the skill he could apply to the
fitting of (minus-lens) glasses for them.  When people break their
glasses and go without them for a week or two, they frequently
observe that their sight has improved.    As a matter of fact the
sight always improves, to a greater or less degree, when glasses
are discarded, although the fact may not always be noted.

    That the human eye resents (minus lens) glasses is a fact
which no one would attempt to deny. **

    Every oculist knows that patients have to "get used" to them,
and that sometimes they never succeed in doing so.  Patients with
high degrees of myopia have a great difficulty in accustoming
themselves to the full correction, and often are never able to do
so.

    The strong concave glasses required by myopes of high degree
make all objects seem much smaller than they really are...

    These are unpleasantness that cannot be overcome...

    All glasses contract the field of vision to a greater or less
degree.  Even with very weak glasses patients are unable to see
distinctly unless they look through the center of the lenses, with
the frames at right angles to the line of vision; and their vision
lowered if they fail to do this ...

    As for putting (minus-lens) glasses upon a child it is enough
to make the angels weep.

Dr. William H. Bates, Ophthalmologist

      _______________________________________________

               COMMENTARY

** Except that they do.  Witness the adverse reactions here on
sci.med.vision

       _________________________________________

          SCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVE

    The task of science is both to extend the range of our
experience and to reduce it to order, and this task presents
various aspects inseparable connected with one another.  Only by
experience itself do we come to recognize those laws which grant
us a comprehensive view of the diversity of phenomena.    As our
knowledge becomes wider, we must even be prepared therefore to
expect alterations in the point of view best suited for the
ordering of experience.

Niels Bohr,
"Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature."