ance of physical
training and development, and in such institutions the deterioration
of vision is in proportion less than in institutions where physical
training is not considered. In one school of over 200 middle class
girls, Dr. Carter found that, during a period of six years, no fewer
than ten per cent. of the total number of girls admitted during that
time have been compelled to take one or more terms' leave of absence,
and of the present number twenty-eight per cent. have medical
certificates exempting them from gymnastic exercise and 10.25 per
cent. of the total present number wear eye glasses of some kind or
other. From my own experience the same number of students in our
schools would show about the same percentage of visual defects. These
questions are of such growing importance that not only instructors,
but the medical fraternity, should not rest until these evils are
eradicated.

[Footnote 2: Nov. 1, 1890.]

Dr. J.W. Ballantyne, of Edinburgh, in a lecture[3] on diseases of
infancy and childhood, says: "The education of the young people of a
nation is to that nation a subject of vital importance." The same
writer quotes the startling statement made by Prof. Pfluger, that of
45,000 children examined in Germany more than one-half were suffering
from defective eyesight, while in some schools the proportion of the
short sighted was seventy or eighty per cent., and, crowning all, was
the Heidelberg Gymnasium, with 100 per cent. These figures, the result
of a careful examination, are simply startling, and almost make one
feel that it were better to return to the old Greek method of teaching
by word of mouth.

[Footnote 3: _Lancet_. Nov. 1, 1890.]

Prof. Pfluger attributes this large amount of bad sight to
insufficient lighting of school rooms, badly printed books, etc. One
must agree with a certain writer, who says: "Schools are absolute
manufactories of the short sighted, a variety of the human race which
has been created within historic time, and which has enormously
increased in number during the present century." Granting that many
predisposing causes of defective vision cannot be eliminated from the
rules laid down by our city fathers in acquiring an education, it
would be well if the architects of school buildings would bear in mind
that light when admitted into class rooms should not fall directly
into the faces of children, but desks should be so arranged that the
light must be sufficiently strong an