Myopia or short-sightedness among the Germans is growing at a tremendous rate.  While I do not believe that the German children perform more work than our own children, there is one cause for this defect which has never been touched upon by writers, and that is the shape of the head.  The broad, flat face, or German type, as I would call it, has not the deep orbit of the more narrow, sharp-featured face of the American type.  The eye of the German standing out more prominently, and, in consequence, less protected, is thereby more prone to grow into a near-sighted eye.  One of the significant results of hard study was recently brought to my notice by looking over the statistics on the schools of Munich in 1889.  In those schools 2,327 children suffered from defective sight, 996 boys and 1,331 girls.

Of 1,000 boys in the first or elementary class, 36 are short-sighted; in the second, 49; in the third, 70; in the fourth, 94; in the fifth, 108; in the sixth, 104; and in the last and seventh, 108.  The number of short-sighted boys, therefore, from the first class to the seventh increases about three-fold.  In the case of girls, the increase is from 37 to 119.

These statistics in themselves show us the effects of overwork, incessant reading or study by defective gas or lamp light, or from an over-stimulating light, as the arc light, late hours, dissipation, and frequent rubbing of the eye, also fatigue, sudden changes from darkness to light, and, what is probably worse than all, reading on railway trains.  The constant oscillations of the car cause an over-activity of the muscle of accommodation, which soon becomes exhausted; the brain willing the eye to give it a clear photograph continues to force the ciliary muscle, which muscle governs the accommodation, in renewed activity, and the result may easily be foretold.

The fond parents finding that the vitiated air of the city is making their once rosy-cheeked children turn pale, seek a remedy in the fresh air of the country.  The children find their way to city schools; this necessitates traveling so many miles a day in railway cars.  The children take this opportunity of preparing their studies while en route to the city, and here is where they get their first eye-strain.  Children have the example set them by their parents or business men, who read the daily papers on the trains.  Children are great imitators, and when their attention is called to the evil, quote their parents’ example, and they follow it.  No wonder each generation is growing more effeminate.

The light in sick rooms should never fall directly on the eyes, nor should the rooms be either too dark or too light.

The Esquimaux and Indians long ago noted the fact that sunlight reflected from freshly fallen snow would soon cause blindness.

The natives of northern Africa blacken themselves around the eyes to prevent ophthalmia from the glare of the hot sand.  In Fiji the natives, when they go fishing, blacken their faces.  My friend.  Dr. Bartelott, presented me with a pair of eye protectors, which he brought from Alaska.  The natives use them to protect themselves from snow blindness.  These snow spectacles, or snow eyes, as they are called, are usually made out of pine wood, which is washed upon their shores, drift wood from southern climes.