At what age should children first wear glasses?  This is a much debatable question.  Where there is simply a defect of vision I should never prescribe a pair of glasses for a child under ten years of age.  A child under this age runs many risks of injury to the eyeball by accident to the glasses, and to cut the eye with glass is a very serious affair.  Rather let a child go without study, or even with impaired vision, than run the risk of a permanent loss of sight.

Another source of evil I must call your attention to, and that is the indiscriminate use of glasses given by itinerant venders of spectacles who claim a thorough knowledge of the eye, who make examination free, but charge double price for glasses.

Persons, before submitting themselves into the hands of opticians, should know that they are not suffering from any incipient disease of their eyes.  I do not, for a moment, claim that a practical optician cannot give you a pair of glasses which will make you see—­he does nothing more than hand you a number of pairs of glasses and you select the one pair which you think answers the purpose.  How can anyone but a medical man know that the impairment of vision does not arise from diminished sensibility of the retina?  If so, the glasses just purchased, which may be comfortable for a time, may cause an irreparable loss of vision.  Every ophthalmic surgeon will tell you that he has had a number of such cases.  Do not be misguided by purchasing cheap spectacles.  Glasses advertised as having “remarkable qualities” are always to be passed by.  They have “remarkable qualities;” they always leave the person wearing them worse at the end of a few months.  Whenever an eye finds relief in a shaded or colored glass, something is going wrong with the interior of that eye.  Seek advice, but do not trust the eyes of yourself, much less those of your children, in the hands of the opticians who advertise their examinations free.

Such individuals should be brought before a tribunal and the matter sifted as to whether the sense of sight is less to be taken care of than if that same patient were ill with pneumonia and a druggist were to prescribe remedies which might or might not aid this patient.  If one man must comply with the law, why should not the other?  Our medical colleges are lengthening the course of studies; the advances in the various departments of science demand this.  It is by the aid of the ophthalmoscope that many obscure diseases are diagnosed, and while it is impossible for every young man who obtains a diploma to become thoroughly proficient in the use of this instrument, yet the eye shows to him many conditions which guide him to the road of successful treatment.  Think of a case of optic neuritis—­inflammation of the optic nerve—­going to an optician and fitting one set of glasses after another until the patient suddenly discovers that blindness is inevitable.  Many individuals, and very intelligent ones at that, think that so long as a glass makes them see, that is all they need.  When we know that scarcely two eyes are alike, we can at once feel that it is very important that each eye should be properly adjusted for a glass; by this we are sure of having comfort in reading and preserving vision.