The first effort parents should make is to see that their children have plenty of outdoor exercise.  Good, warm clothing in winter, and light texture cloth in summer.  A great difference of opinion exists as to the age at which a child should begin its studies.  I feel sure that the boy who commences his studies at ten will far outrun the one who commences study at six.  Every child should commence his lessons in the best kindergarten, the nursery.  Let object lessons be his primer—­let him be taught by word of mouth—­then, when his brain is what it should be for a boy of ten, his eyes will be the better able to bear the fatigue of the burdens which will be forced upon him.  Listen to what Milton has left on record as a warning to those young boys or girls who insist upon reading or studying at night with bad illumination.

“My father destined me, from a child, for the pursuits of polite learning, which I prosecuted with such eagerness that, after I was twelve years old, I rarely retired to bed, from my lucubrations, till midnight.  This was the first thing which proved pernicious to my eyes, to the natural weakness of which were added frequent headaches.”

Milton went blind when comparatively a young man, and it was always to him a great grief.  Galileo, the great astronomer, also went blind by overwork.  It was written of him, “The noblest eye which ever nature made is darkened—­an eye so privileged, and gifted with such rare powers, that it may truly be said to have seen more than the eyes of all that are gone, and to have opened the eyes of all that are to come.”

When the defect of far sightedness or near sightedness exists, we have but one recourse—­spectacles.

Some time ago I published, in the Medical and Surgical Reporter an article on the history of spectacles.  The widespread interest which this paper created has stimulated me to continue the research, and since this article appeared I have been able to gather other additional historical data to what has been described as an invention for “poor old men when their sight grows weak.”

The late Wendell Phillips, in his lecture on the “Lost Arts,” speaks of the ancients having magnifying glasses.  “Cicero said that he had seen the entire Iliad, which is a poem as large as the New Testament, written on a skin so that it could be rolled up in the compass of a nut shell;” it would have been impossible either to have written this, or to have read it, without the aid of a magnifying glass.

In Parma, a ring 2,000 years old is shown which once belonged to Michael Angelo.  On the stone are engraved the figures of seven women.  You must have the aid of a glass in order to distinguish the forms at all.  Another intaglio is spoken of—­the figure is that of the god Hercules; by the aid of glasses, you can distinguish the interlacing muscles and count every separate hair on the eyebrows.  Mr. Phillips again speaks of a stone 20 inches long and 10 wide containing a whole treatise on mathematics, which would be perfectly illegible without glasses.  Now, our author says, if we are unable to read and see these minute details without glasses, you may suppose the men who did the engraving had pretty strong spectacles.