Biographic Clinics Volume 5

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. A LIFE AND CAREER BLIGHTED BY IGNORED EYESTRAIN Seventeen years ago a healthy lad of 12 years of age began having frontal headaches. He was going to school at the time. Since then he has had such headaches all the time. They were not sickheadaches, and up to three years ago he has never had any other symptoms of disease, local or systemic. About ten years ago he went into newspaper editorial work, reading proofs, etc., for ten hours, mostly in the night by artificial light, and, besides this, going to school in the afternoons. He has thus put his eyes to excessive labor for the last nine or ten years. There is not one pair of eyes in a hundred able to withstand so severe use as this without producing injury somewhere and somehow. Three years ago the patient's mother noticed?and photographs taken at this time show the fact?that the left eye-lid began drooping. At this time he found, while at his work at the desk, that his eyes began watering, and that his headaches increased. He consulted an oculist of his city, Dr. F., who ordered glasses whichthe patient could not wear, or did not wear. There was a complete failure to inquire as to causes and conditions, and adequate cure was plainly not attempted. At this time the saving of the man's eyes and profession was plainly possible, but failure was more plainly certain. Dr. B., the best oculist in the city, was next consulted, but only after a year or more of aggravation of the disease had passed. When shown Dr. F.'s glasses, Dr. B. said they did no harm, and did no good, ordered them left off, and that no glasses at all should be used. His attention was concentrated upon a symptom which had suddenly appeared the day before. This was paralysis of the iris, the pupil being dilated to the extreme width, of course wi...