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Sun-Gazing

Light is necessary to the health of the eye, and darkness is injurious
to it. Eye shades, dark glasses, darkened rooms, weaken the sight and
sooner or later produce inflammations. Persons with normal sight can
look directly at the sun, or the strongest artificial light, without
injury or discomfort, and persons with imperfect sight are never
permanently injured by such lights, though temporary ill effects,
lasting from a few minutes to a few hours, days, weeks, months, or
longer, may be produced. In all abnormal conditions of the eyes, light
is beneficial. It is rarely sufficient to cure, but is a great help in
gaining relaxation by other methods.

The quickest way to get results from the curative power of sunlight is
to focus the rays with a burning glass on the white part of the eye
when the patient looks far downward, moving the light from side to
side to avoid heat. This may be done for part of a minute at frequent
intervals.

Looking at the sun, while slower in its results, has often been
sufficient to effect permanent cures, sometimes in a very short time.
There is a right way and a wrong way to do this. Persons with
imperfect sight should never look directly at the sun at first,
because, while no permanent harm can come from it, great temporary
inconvenience may result. Such persons should begin by looking to one
side of the sun, and after becoming accustomed to the strong light,
should look a little nearer to its source, and so on until they become
able to look directly at the sun without discomfort.

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Better Eyesight
A monthly magazine devoted to the prevention and cure of imperfect
sight without glasses
Copyright, 1920, by the Central Fixation Publishing Company
Editor—W. H. Bates, M.D.
Publisher—Central Fixation Publishing Co.
$2.00 per year, 20 cents per copy
342 West 42nd Street, New York, N. Y.
Vol. II - June, 1920 - No. 6
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