Sight and civilization
Most ophthalmologists seem to sincerely believe that the last word on refraction issues has already been said, and is said more than a hundred years ago by German science. If you share their views, you will have to despair. Today, almost every person suffers from one or another form of refractive error, but for more than 100 years we have been trying to convince ourselves that for such visual disturbances, which not only cause inconvenience, but are often painful and dangerous, there are no mitigating measures and no other way of getting rid of it, except for those optical crutches, which are known to us as glasses. Often they assure us that there are practically no preventive measures in the modern conditions of life. In all this, in our opinion, the impotence and uselessness of official ophthalmology is manifested.
Ophthalmologists unanimously affirm that the human organ of vision has never been intended by Nature for the purposes in which it is used in our time, that is, for working at close range, which modern conditions of life require of us. In their opinion, Nature, designing refractive devices for human eyes, made a serious mistake. She, according to ophthalmologists, did not expect that a person would come up with tiny hooks and scribbles, call them letters and punctuation marks and use them to exchange information. For this, they teach us, the man had to become sufficiently short-sighted to be able to understand his own scribbles. It was here that our troubles started.
With age, they tell us, the lens is made less elastic, flattened. It's still good, but it loses its ability to increase its curvature, resulting in a long-sighted person becoming old, and then when reading, writing or any manual work, he has to resort topoints.
In short, theoreticians consider themselves wiser and more far-sighted than Nature itself, who created so many wonders around, among which these theorists themselves are clearly incapable even to remotely approach the creative power and foresight of Nature, so arrogantly criticized by them.
Yes, indeed, the evolution of the eye seems to have come to an end long before the appearance of schools, prints, electric lighting, film and television. Prior to this, however, it ideally served the needs of man. A man in those distant times was a hunter, a shepherd, a farmer or a warrior. We are told that he needed mainly vision in the distance. And since the eye in rest is adapted specifically for sight in the distance( echoes of the same theory about the relaxation of the annular muscle and the flattening of the lens), it is believed that the process of vision is as passive as the perception of sound that does not require any muscular effort. It is believed that vision near was more likely an exception, on which it was required to apply muscular efforts of such a short duration that the visual process in this case could be carried out without any appreciable strain on the accommodation mechanism.
I must admit that all this would seem a very convincing explanation of the problem if humanity in those times immemorial consisted of men alone who, in the opinion of resourceful interpreters, needed to look only afar, but since there is no doubt that women in thosetimes also existed, then all this so brilliantly developed theory collapses like a house of cards. The fact is that the authors of this theory forget or ignore that the primitive woman was a seamstress, weaver, an embroiderer and in general a master in all sorts of elegant and delicate works. Nevertheless, in women who lived at the same time as the men, the vision was as good as those of the latter.
When a person learned to convey his thoughts through letters and printed publications, undeniably, previously unknown requirements began to be presented to the eye. At first, this affected a very few people, but gradually their circle expanded and expanded until in the so-called developed countries a large part of the population was not affected by these new requirements. So, if several centuries ago in these countries even rulers and kings were not taught to read and write, today they are forced to go to school all indiscriminately, regardless of whether they want it or not.
If several generations ago books were expensive and rare, now they are available to everyone. With the appearance of the newspaper with its endless columns of a badly written and equally badly printed text, a significant part of the life of civilized people began to leave for reading newspapers and magazines, as reading all this began to be considered a measure of education and culture.
More recently, candlelight has been replaced by artificial lighting, which now tempts people to transfer their activities and entertainment to those hours during which the primitive man was forced to rest.
And finally, more recently, movies and television have appeared, designed to complete this supposedly disastrous process.
Was it reasonable to expect that Nature would take into account all these circumstances and create such an authority that would meet the additional requirements that arose? In modern ophthalmology, it is generally accepted that Nature did not foresee and could not provide for all these circumstances, that is, we repeat again that she, who created so many miracles and so wonderfully organized everything in the animal, vegetable and mineral world, was, in the opinion of the supporters of thistheory, is more stupid than one's own child-man, especially those people who have developed such a theory. By the same logic, among other things, it turns out that, although the development of civilization depends on the organ of vision more than from any other sense organ, the eye nevertheless was not at all fit for solving its problems.
There are many facts that seem to confirm this conclusion. While primitive man practically did not suffer from sight defects, today among people over 21 and living in a civilization, nine out of ten have poor eyesight. With age, this ratio increases, and among the 40-year-old it is almost impossible to find a person who would not suffer from any lack of vision. This is confirmed by statistics.
For more than a hundred years physicians have been looking for a method to stop the devastating impact of civilization on the human eye. Germany, for which this issue was once of vital military importance, spent millions and millions of marks on the implementation of advice of specialists, but everything was wasted. At present, most students who study this issue admit that those methods that had been arrogantly defended as reliable guarantors of vision, gave little or nothing.
Why is this? Because the theory that our ancestors needed only vision in the distance and that sight was an exception was based only on scientific speculation. Our ancestors also worked hard, using their eyes to look at a close distance. City dwellers were always proud of their filigree embroidery. Peasant women after heavy work in the evenings made decorative stitches and decorated little clothes, and their husbands on long winter evenings read books in the dim light of an oil lamp. At the same time, if you look closely at some ancient book or almanac, make sure that the paper was usually rough and rough, and the font is small and not very clear. Nevertheless, at that time, the percentage of serious vision problems was not as high as it is now, and the reasons for this are not the ones we described above, when we acquainted the reader with the theories of Western science.