, when not inherited, is produced by looking
intently and continuously at near objects. Children should be encouraged
to describe objects at a distance, with which they are unacquainted, and
parents should choose out-door occupations and amusements for children
who show a tendency to shortsightedness.

A report was issued in 1906, by the school board of Glasgow, as to an
investigation by Dr H. Wright Thomas, ophthalmic surgeon, regarding the
eyesight of school children, which includes the following passage. Dr
Wright Thomas states that the teachers tested the visual acuteness of
52,493 children, and found 18,565, or 35%, to be below what is regarded
as the normal standard. He examined the 18,565 defectives by
retinoscopy, and found that 11,209, or 21% of the whole, had ocular
defects. The proportion of these cases was highest in the poor and
closely-built districts and in old schools, and was lowest in the
better-class schools and those near the outskirts of the city. Defective
vision, apart from ocular defect, seems to be due partly to want of
training of the eyes for distant objects and partly to exhaustion of the
eyes, which is easily induced when work is carried on in bad light, or
the nutrition of the children is defective from bad feeding and
unhealthy surroundings. Regarding training of the eyes for distant
objects, much might be done in the infant department by the total
abolition of sewing, which is definitely hurtful to such young eyes, and
the substitution of competitive games involving the recognition of
small objects at a distance of 20 ft. or more. An annual testing by the
teachers, followed by medical inspection of the children found
defective, would soon cause all existing defects to be corrected, and
would lead to the detection of those which develop during school life.

HISTORY OF INSTITUTIONS

Although there is a record of a hospital established by St Basil at
Caesarea, Cappadocia, in the 4th century, a refuge by the hermit St
Lymnee (d. c. 455) at Syr, Syria, in the 5th century, and an institution
by St Bertrand, bishop of Le Mans, in the 7th century, the first public
effort to benefit the blind was the founding of a hospital at Paris, in
1260, by Louis IX., for 300 blind persons. The common legend is that he
founded it as an asylum for 300 of his soldiers who had become blinded
in the crusade in Egypt, but the statutes of the founder are preserved,
and no mention is made of crusaders. This Hospi