Impaired vision

“ When clearness of vision in one eye is impaired, whether artificially or by disease, binocular vision is possible so long as the weak eye receives an impression of the object, however dim or indistinct the object may appear. ”

“ As part of our regular health routine, we often overlook vision. Good vision affects how we work, communicate, and learn. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, about 80 million Americans suffer from potentially blinding eye diseases, 3 million have low vision, and 200,000 more are severely visually impaired. ”

“ Tragically, some visually impaired people who could benefit from this operation cannot be helped because suitable corneal tissue is not always available when needed. Donor eyes are also needed for vision research so that we may learn more about how this organ functions and develop ways to prevent and treat the many disorders which threaten sight. ”

“ The blindness in the eyes is so complete and set in such a full array that it acts at first on one almost like a kind of vision. The eyes hold themselves like pictures of eyes, like little walls, as if real eyes were in behind them. One wonders if there is any one who could ever manage to break through them, fleck up little ordinary human things—personality, for instance, atmosphere, or light—against them. ”

“ Health officials have identified the most significant and preventable threats to vision. According to the Department of Health and Human Service's Healthy People 2010 report, visual impairment represents one of our country's 10 most frequent causes of disability. ”

“ Before discussing the prevention of blindness in adults, I wish to say a few words concerning the attitude of oculists toward patients suffering from eye diseases which, in all probability, will result in loss of vision. ”

“ The age that marks off those to whom total blindness carries with it the loss of dream-vision from those whose dream-vision continues, is thus the age at which the sight-centre has reached a sufficient stage of development to enable it to maintain its full function, when partially or totally deprived of retinal stimulation. ”

“ 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? ”

“ The improvement in my vision since I have been under treatment has been indisputable. After two weeks the intangible suffering caused by light left me, and it has never returned. I can go out in the brightest sunlight without glasses of any kind, and, although my eyes feel weak and I squint a little, there is no real distress. I can look out of a window onto a sunny street, and when I turn back again into the room there is no blindness. ”

“ Except in extraordinarily rare cases blindness is curable.” In fact, unless the eyeball has been removed from the head, I should be unwilling to set any limits whatever to the possibility of relieving this greatest of human ills, for I have never seen a case or injury or disease of the eye which was sufficient to prevent improvement of vision. In all cases of blindness, whatever their cause, a mental strain has been demonstrated, and when this strain has been relieved perception of light has always been obtained. ”

“ And now when it is known, it cannot be perceived, but by means of some particular experiments, which require care and attention to make them succeed.
What is the reason that so remarkable a defect of sight, common to all mankind, was so long unknown, and is now perceived with so much difficulty? It is surely this, that the defect is at some distance from the axis of the eye, and consequently in a part of the field of vision to which we never attend naturally, and to which we cannot attend at all, without the aid of some particular circumstances. ”

“ After he has demonstrated these facts he is told that persons with imperfect sight always attempt to hold their points of fixation too long, even when the lowering of vision is caused by an injury, or by a foreign body in the eye. ”

“ Sight is a precious gift that enables us to experience the wonder of the world around us; but few of us think about what we would do if we lost our vision. Unfortunately, millions of Americans must face this challenge because of conditions like cataracts, glaucoma, diabetic eye disease, or age-related macular degeneration. ”

“ I have seen an Oxford [283] and also a London oculist, who have both examined the eye and pronounce the sudden seizure to be one of serous effusion upon the retina. It seems probable that the impairment of vision will be permanent, and so prevent all operative work where any delicacy is required. The blindness is so complete, that if I look about an inch below the electric light placed at a distance of a very few yards, I am not able to perceive any luminosity. Meanwhile, I have to wear the darkest of possible goggles, and generally to live the life of a blind man. ”

“ Seguin knew a man with hemi-blindness, from cortical injury, which had persisted unaltered for twenty-three years. 'Traumatic inhibition' cannot possibly account for this. The blindness must have been an ' Ausfallser- scheinung,' due to the loss of vision's essential organ. ”

“ Try to imagine a world without sunsets, without the smiles of friends, without the comfort of books, or without any of the simple sights we take for granted but which make our lives so much richer. Such a world will become a reality for the fifty thousand Americans who will become blind this year alone. Over a million other Americans will also suffer some form of visual impairment. ”

“ And no spectacles will correct the mental astigmatism of the multitude, a fact that is often a cause of considerable annoyance to the possessors of normal sight. That defect of vision, whether congenital or induced by the confinements of early training, persists and increases throughout life, like other forms of myopia. ”

“ But when asked to look at objects which aroused an intense interest her vision became normal.
When one is not interested, in short, one's mind is not under control, and without mental control one can neither learn nor see. Not only the memory but all other mental faculties are improved when the eyesight becomes normal. It is a common experience with patients cured of defective sight to find that their ability to do their work has improved. ”

“ MANY years ago patients who had been cured of imperfect sight by treatment without glasses quite often told me that after their vision had become perfect they were always relieved of pain, not only in the eyes and head, but in other parts of the body, even when the pain was apparently caused by some organic disease, or by an injury. ”

“ The commonest visual defects are, first, inflammation of the cornea, or imperfections of the lens—the cornea is often so scarred as to make vision imperfect; second, myopia, or progressive shortsightedness, a condition in which the axis of the eye gradually grows longer. This lengthening is accompanied by stretching of the eyeball, and such children always run the risk of the inner and most important part of the wall of the eye, the retina or nerve layer, being torn away, and blindness resulting. ”

“ If, for some special reason, the oculist fears it would be unwise to tell the patient that blindness is imminent, he should at least urge him to conserve his remaining vision, and advise him to do as many things as possible by touch, and warn him of the consequences of eyestrain. But, whenever possible, it is kinder to prepare the patient for oncoming blindness, so that he may shape his life accordingly, and may be induced to learn to read raised type, and use a writing device, before the light is entirely gone. ”

“ The patients who offer these changes complain usually of considerable dimness of sight, which on examination is found to include both diminution in the acuteness of visual perception, and restriction in the field of vision, or extent of any object seen at once. ”

“ MENTAL CONTROL IN RELATION TO VISION By W. H. BATES, M.D.
THE eye with perfect sight is always at rest. When it begins to strain the sight becomes imperfect. The eye with imperfect sight is always straining, and when it ceases to do so the sight becomes normal. ”

“ If we take the lowest of these figures, and assume that 400 out of every 1000 blind persons might have been saved from such a calamity, we realize the importance of preventative measures. For the physiology and pathology of the eye generally, see Vision and Eye. ”

“ The fact is that the nearer the point of maximum vision approaches a mathematical point, which has no area, the better the sight.
The cause of this loss of function in the center of sight is mental strain; and as all abnormal conditions of the eyes, organic as well as functional, are accompanied by mental strain, all such conditions must necessarily be accompanied by loss of central fixation. When the mind is under a strain the eye usually goes more or less blind. ”

“ Vision is a remarkable gift. Providing nearly 40 percent of all sensory input to the brain, our eyes allow us to read, drive, and experience many of life's greatest pleasures. Vision, however, is an extremely fragile gift, one that can dim with injury or the onset of disease. Moreover, it is a gift that, with few exceptions, cannot be restored once it is lost.
Thus, given the important but delicate nature of good vision in our lives, it is tragic that each year thousands of Americans suffer vision loss that might have been prevented. ”

“ Even if the doctor says this girl is sound and strong, her early months of college labor should be carefully watched. Above all, her eyes should be seen to, because in my experience some unsuspected disorder of vision has been fruitful of headaches and overstrain of brain, nor is it enough to know that at the beginning her eyes are good. Extreme use often evolves practical evils from visual difficulties at first so slight as to need or seem to need no correction. ”

“ A state of comparative health, mental and physical with calmer sleep and a more natural exercise of the organs of vision, succeeded. I have made many attempts at a further reduction, but have been uniformly unsuccessful, owing to the extreme and almost unendurable agony occasioned thereby.
"The peculiar creative faculty of the eye, the fearful gift of a diseased vision, still remains, but materially weakened and divested of its former terrors. ”

“ First, adaptation of vision to a dark room, like those used for flyers during the war. Then the drops of black liquid that the professor had invented, slowly spreading over the eyes, subtly altering the rods and cones of the retina, the nerve endings sensitive to light.
And I began to live in a gradually fading world. Have you ever wondered what it's like to go blind? The increasing dusk and darkness around the edges of your vision, the little errors and mistakes that begin to crop up in everyday life. ”

“ Fortunately for the victims of this distressing condition, their eyes often become straight spontaneously, regardless of what is or is not done to them. More rarely the vision of the squinting eye is restored. ”

“ In the same way you may temporarily improve the sight by effort, but you cannot improve it to normal, and if the effort is allowed to become continuous, the sight will steadily deteriorate and may eventually be destroyed. Very seldom is the impairment or destruction of vision due to any fault in the construction of the eye. Of two equally good pairs of eyes one will retain perfect sight to the end of life, and the other will lose it in the kindergarten, simply because one looks at things without effort and the other does not. ”

“ Pupils entering our schools come to us with good eyes, but if they stay with us till the end of the course, GO to 70 per cent, of them will leave us with but two thirds normal visual acuity or less. Most of this loss of vision is caused directly by the strain put upon the eyes in reading, writing and drawing. ”

“ Of twenty persons who became blind after their seventh year all have "dream-vision"—as I shall term the faculty of seeing in dreams. The period from the fifth to the seventh year is thus indicated as the critical one. Before this age the visual centre is undergoing its elementary education; its life is closely dependent upon the constant food-supply of sensations; and when these are cut off by blindness, it degenerates and decays. If blindness occurs between the fifth and the seventh years, the preservation of the visualizing power depends on the degree of development of the individual. ”

“ When the eye has imperfect sight, the pupil usually contracts in the light and expands in the dark, but it has been observed to contract to the size of a pinhole in the dark. Whether the contraction takes place under the influence of light or of darkness, the cause is the same, namely, strain. Persons with imperfect sight suffer great inconvenience, resulting in lowered vision, from changes in the intensity of the light; but the lowered vision is always temporary, and if the eye is persistently exposed to these conditions, the sight is benefited. ”

“ Ensuring a lifetime of healthy eyes begins at infancy. Even an infant with healthy looking eyes may have an unsuspected vision problem that only an eye specialist can detect. We now know that parts of the brain involved in vision cannot develop without early stimulation. ”

“ Blindness and visual impairment affect millions of Americans. Early diagnosis and timely treatment are critical to minimize vision loss from eye diseases as well as vision loss that is correctable with eye glasses or contact lenses. During Save Your Vision Week, I encourage all Americans to take action to protect their vision. Unfortunately, most people have limited knowledge of blinding eye disorders. ”