Dear Second-opinion friends,

Subject: The word "cure" makes for a very bad and false idea.

My appreciation of Bates was in his FIRST steps
of prevention -- i.e., was tp INSIST that the kids
be cognizant of their Snellen.

And further, the EMPOWERMENT of the kids to
take the actions that are necessary for THEM
to confirm their own clearing.

I do not support the notion that this clearing a Snellen
is EVER a "cure".

It is essential that this work be under the
complete control of the person doing it.

If you use the work "cure" then you bring the
entire medical world into the discussion with
the implication that MEDICINE must "cure"
a negative refractive STATE for the natural
eye.

How you "parse" these words is up to you.

But a great deal of science depends on using
simple and EXACT terms.

Here is Bates discussion about his his
SECOND OPINION, clashed with the majority
opinion of his day.

If the person himself had made these critical
measurements himself -- has seen the results -- and
kept on doing it -- then this "contest" of
wills would end.

==============

Dr. W. H. Bates

Successful prevention rejected -- by people who do not like
the idea of it.

Chapter 32

Why it is very important that you take control and do it
yourself.

==================

By Dr. Bates:

Patients whom I have cured of various errors of refraction
have frequently returned to specialists who had prescribed glasses
for them, and, by reading fine print and the Snellen test card
with normal vision, have demonstrated the fact that they were
cured, without in any way shaking the faith of these practitioners
in the doctrine that such cures are impossible.

The patient with progressive myopia whose case was mentioned
in Chapter XV returned after her cure to the specialist who had
prescribed her glasses, and who had said not only that there was
no hope of improvement, but that the condition would probably
progress until it ended in blindness, to tell him the good news
which, as an old friend of her family, she felt he had a right to
hear. But while he was unable to deny that her vision was, in
fact, normal without glasses, he said it was impossible that she
should have been cured of myopia, because myopia was incurable.
How he reconciled this statement with his former patient's
condition he was unable to make clear to her.

A lady with compound myopic astigmatism suffered from almost
constant headaches which were very much worse when she took her
glasses off, The theatre and the movies caused her so much
discomfort that she feared to indulge in these recreations. She
was told to take off her glasses and advised, among other things,
to go to the movies; to look first at the corner of the screen,
then off to the dark, then back to the screen a little nearer to
the center, and so forth.

She did so, and soon became able to look directly at the
pictures without discomfort. After that nothing troubled her.
One day she called on her former ophthalmological adviser, in the
company of a friend who wanted to have her glasses changed, and
told him of her cure. The facts seemed to make no impression on
him whatever. He only laughed and said, "I guess Dr. Bates is
more popular with you than I am."

Sometimes patients themselves, after they are cured, allow
themselves to be convinced that it was impossible that such a
thing could have happened, and go back to their glasses. This
happened in the case of a patient already mentioned in the chapter
on Presbyopia, who was cured in fifteen minutes by the aid of his
imagination. He was very grateful for a time, and then he began
to talk to eye specialists whom he knew and straightway grew
skeptical as to the value of what I had done for him.

One day I met him at the home of a mutual friend, and in the
presence of a number of other people he accused me of having
hypnotized him, adding that to hypnotize a patient without his
knowledge or consent was to do him a grievous wrong.

Some of the listeners protested that whether I had hypnotized
him or not, I had not only done him no harm but had greatly
benefited him, and he ought to forgive me. He was unable,
however, to take this view of the matter.

Later he called on a prominent eye specialist who told him
that the presbyopia and astigmatism from which he had suffered
were incurable, and that if he persisted in going without. his
glasses he might do himself great harm. The fact that his sight
was perfect for the distance and the near-point without glasses
had no effect upon the specialist, and the patient allowed himself
to be frightened into disregarding it also.

He went back to his glasses, and so far as I know has been
wearing them ever since. The story obtained wide publicity, for
the man had a large circle of friends and acquaintances; and if I
had destroyed his sight I could scarcely have suffered more than I
did for curing him.

================

By this metod of "authority figure" and NOT
BY SCIENCE OR FACTS -- this situation is
perpetuated.

It is no one's fault -- but it is necessary
to understand why you must take control and
clear your Snellen youself.

Otis