Chapter 19 Chapter 19 Throwing away the glasses

One of the most influential medical eccentrics in America was Dr. William Bates, a New York City eye, ear, nose, and throat specialist.Thousands of knowledgeable people still believe in his medical skills because of ignorance.He is the chief figure in the contemporary superstition against the wearing of spectacles in favor of correcting vision by eye exercises. Dr. Bates was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1860.His early medical experience was impressive.He graduated from Cornell University in 1881, received his medical degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1885, and served as an assistant physician at the Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital, first at Bellevue Hospital, and then at the New York Eye Hospital as an attending physician.From 1886 to 1891, he taught ophthalmology at the New York Graduate School of Medicine and Hospital.

In 1902 Dr. Bates disappeared suddenly. Six weeks later his wife learned that he was an assistant at Charing Cross Hospital in London, where he had previously been hospitalized as a patient.She immediately travels to London and finds him in an exhausted state with no memory of what happened.He disappeared again two days later.Mrs. Bates couldn't find her anywhere in continental Europe, but she returned to America to continue her search until she died. How exactly Dr. Bates was found remains a strange mystery.A fellow ophthalmologist stumbled upon him in 1910, according to an obituary published in the New York Times on July 11, 1931.At that time he had been a doctor in Grand Forks, North Dakota, for six years.Apparently, Bates was persuaded to return to Manhattan, where he shared a practice with the man who had found him, and was attending at Harlem Hospital until 1922.He married again, pre-deceasing his wife in 1931.

In 1920, Dr. Bates published a book at his own expense, titled "The Treatment of Vision Defects Without Glasses".The book is published by Central Professional Publishing, New York City.And in front of the book is a tribute written by Pastor Daniel Pauling (Bates attended the church of Pastor Pauline and treated his eye disease. The pastor did not need to wear glasses when he was 67 years old. Credit goes to Bates). Twenty years later, the book was published in a revised abbreviated version. Other authors have written dozens of books, but they merely repeat Dr. Bates's views.Harold Peppard's Restoring Sight Without Glasses was published in 1944 and became an American bestseller.In England, Cecil Price's The Improvement of Sight was published in 1934. In 1948, Random Publishing published Ralph McFadden's Seeing Without Glasses, another work based on Bates' theory.

Bates' original work is an inexplicable synthesis of grossly exaggerated cases with baseless reasoning and anatomical ignorance.Much of this material has already appeared in articles written by Bates for several medical journals and in a correspondence textbook on eye exercises that he co-edited with Bernal McFadden (in McFadden's Physical This textbook is heavily advertised).There are more than 50 photographs printed in the book, many of which are quite peculiar.For example, one photo was captioned "Nearsighted Eye Who Didn't Go To School And Read On The Subway."In the photo are the faces of 4 near-sighted animals including elephants, bison, monkeys and puppies.

Central to Dr. Bates' views is his theory of regulation. "Accommodation" refers to the process of adjusting focus within each eye as a person turns to look at objects at different distances.It is a well-recognized fact of ocular anatomy that this accommodation is accomplished by the eye lens changing shape clips.A bundle of muscles called the ciliary muscles when the eye fixates on closer objects.The meat makes the lens more convex.This change in the lens has been photographed and accurately measured.Dr. Bates, however, went so far as to deny it altogether.The lens "is not what creates accommodation," he said.Adjusting the focus is done by changing the total length of the eyeball, and this is due to the action of the two bundles of muscles on the outside of the eyeball!

In support of this paradox, Dr. Bates recorded (with many photographs) some of his experiments with fish eyes.After the lens of the fish eye is removed, the eye is still able to accommodate.Dr. Bates was indifferent to the fact that fish eyes are very different from human eyes.He also described his experiments on some mammals, mainly rabbits and cats.Unfortunately, his introduction fully exposed his almost complete inability to do experimental work. Ophthalmologists drop a drug into the eye that temporarily inhibits the ability to adjust.It has been established that this is due to paralysis of the muscles that control the lens and pupils, but Dr. Bates dismisses it.He asserts that the loss of accommodation does not occur until the drug acts on the muscles on the outside of the eyeball.Not only that, but he claims to have seen patients who had their lenses removed as a result of cataract surgery and were able to adjust easily!Strangely, this phenomenon has not been seen by any other ophthalmologist.In fact, Bates' theory of accommodation (which was so necessary to illustrate the value of his eye exercises) is so patently absurd that even most of his followers have now abandoned it.

According to Bates' theory, the cause of all refractive errors (nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism) was simply "tension" caused by "abnormal mental states."He writes, "The root of any refractive error, strabismus, or other ocular dysfunction, is but a thought,) a wrong thought, and as soon as the thought disappears, so does the obstacle. The worst refractive error can Correction is achieved in an instant. Strabismus can be eliminated, and blindness caused by amblyopia can also be cured. If the elimination of the thought is temporary, the correction is also temporary. When the thought is eliminated forever, the correction becomes permanent.”

Glasses, Bates argues, don't eliminate that tension.In fact, the spectacles interfere with the correction, because the eye adapts to the spectacles, and the tension makes the eyes worse and worse and the spectacles more and more powerful.Bates believes that glasses are just "crutches for the eyes" and should be thrown away. Bates' method is designed to remove tension.The solution is "central fixation" -- learning to look at things in the center of your field of vision instead of staring hard at them.Here's what Dr. Bates says about the importance of this approach:

"Central fixation not only eliminates all refractive errors and dysfunctions of the eye, but also treats many organic diseases. I cannot tell how beneficial this method is. I dare not predict that central fixation can eliminate glaucoma, early Cataracts and syphilitic iritis, but in fact these eye diseases will disappear once the focus is centered. Often the affliction is relieved within a few minutes, and in a few cases it can be completely cured. ... This method can also To treat various infections, diseases caused by protein poisoning, typhoid fever, influenza, syphilis and gonorrhea, as long as you keep your focus on the center, even if foreign objects enter the eyes, there will be no redness, swelling and pain."

To center gaze, or learn to look without straining, Dr. Bates recommends the following: (1) "palm stroking".The patient places the palms of both hands over the eyes (do not press or rub) and thinks "pure black".When the patient is able to see pure black, vision improves immediately.Dr. Bates talked about a 70-year-old patient suffering from astigmatism and early cataracts. After 20 hours of continuous palm massage, his eye disease was completely cured! Bates wrote, "The smaller the area of ​​black that one can conceive in one's mind, the greater the degree of relaxation one can obtain." To do this, he recommends first thinking of a large black area, such as the largest One word above, and then think of smaller and smaller words until you think of a period.He writes, "Some people find it easier to think of a colon, or a bunch of periods, one of which is darker than the others, or a dot above a lowercase i or j, than a period. Others prefer Want commas instead of periods."

If black bores or depresses you, it's best to choose colors that make you happy.“One woman got her eyesight corrected by thinking of yellow goldenrods, and another woman came up with the opal in her ring when she couldn’t think of a period,” Bates said. (2) "Move" and "Swing".By "moving" Dr. Bessau meant moving the eyes back and forth in order to give the illusion of "swinging" from side to side.The smaller the movement, the greater the effect.You can even close your eyes and make imaginary objects sway.Alternating visual and imaginary rocking is especially beneficial.After one has mastered the technique of moving and swinging, one is eventually able to achieve what Perhon calls "universal swinging."Here's what Bates had to say on the subject: "When visual or imaginary swaying is successful, one experiences a sense of relaxation, which is the general swaying sensation. This sensation can be transmitted to any object of which one is aware. Bring attention to the body Any part of the body can be imagined to cause a rocking motion in that part. It can be transmitted to the chair one is sitting on, or to any object in the room, or to a distant object in memory. Buildings, cities, the whole world can be Show swing." In addition to palm stroking, moving, and rocking, Bates recommends reading in unusually unfavorable conditions, such as while lying on your back, while riding a bus or train, in dim light, or in direct sunlight.Looking directly at the sun for short periods of time so that the beneficial sunlight hits the retina also improves vision (a practice that, by the way, can easily cause permanent retinal damage). Any ophthalmologist other than Bates would agree that presbyopia is the normal loss of accommodation that comes with aging.Dr. Bates immediately came out and corrected them.He writes, "Presbyopia is in fact not a 'normal consequence of old age'.... It is not caused by hardening of the lens, but by a difficulty in seeing near objects. It is not necessarily related to age.... Indeed , the lens hardens with age, just as the bones harden... But since the lens is not the accommodating factor, this fact is irrelevant. Also, although some people's lenses flatten or lose some flexion with age Light ability, but it has also been observed that the lens of a 90-year-old person remains completely clear and undistorted. Since the ciliary muscle is not a factor of adjustment, its weakening or atrophy does not have any effect on the weakening of the accommodation ability. " According to Bates, squints, spots in the eyes, and even the twinkling of stars are all due to eye fatigue.To physicists, there is nothing mysterious about the twinkling of stars.That's because the often changing air currents have different densities and therefore different degrees of refraction.But for Bates, the flicker is in the head.If you don't look at the stars too intensely, they don't twinkle anymore. "...when the illusion of flickering is produced, it is often possible to 'wiggle' the star so that it disappears. On the other hand, it is possible to make the stars and even the moon twinkle if one looks very intensely." In England, Dr. Bates' most famous disciple was Aldous Huxley.He suffered from an eye infection early in life that permanently scarred his cornea.After experimenting with Bates' treatment, he found his eyesight so improved that he wrote a book in 1942 called The Art of Seeing.This book was later compared to the bishop of Berkeley's famous treatise on the curative effects of "tar cold infusions."Huxenley generalized Bates' theory and added several new treatments, such as juggling, craps, and dominoes.He claims that sitting in the last row of seats at the movies is a good exercise for the severely myopic.Closing your eyes and imagining holding a rubber band between your thumb and index finger is also good for treating myopia.You squeeze the circle into an oval, then let it bounce back, and keep doing this until you get tired. The most interesting therapy advocated by Huxley was what he called "nasal writing."You imagine your nose extending forward about 8 inches, then close your eyes and imagine your nose as a pencil.You shake your head and sign in the air.He wrote, "Writing with the nose for a while, followed by a few minutes of palm stroking, ... will temporarily improve the visual defect to some extent." If you persist, you can get long-term improvement. Huxley's explanation for the curative effect of palm stroking sounds a lot like that of Messmer, the discoverer of "animal magnetism." ". . . every part of the body carries its own electric potential. It is probable that placing a hand over the eye will have some effect on the electrical situation of this fatigued organ which will rejuvenate the tissue and indirectly Peace of mind." Dr. Bates died in 1931, but his eccentric methods were carried on by many disciples across the country.By the 1920s, dozens of schools were teaching Bates therapy in England and Germany.It became more widespread during Hitler's reign.There is no doubt that thousands of patients believe they are benefiting.Bates' theory of conditioning and the efficacy of his eye exercises are completely unsubstantiated, but what is to be done to explain the above phenomena? The answer is manifold.First, there are many optometrists who want to sell a pair of glasses to customers who don't need glasses.After wearing them for a period of time, the eyes adapt to the glasses, so when the glasses are taken off, the vision is obviously weakened.After about a week without glasses, vision will gradually return to normal.During this period, if he strokes and moves his palms, he will attribute the improvement of vision to this eye exercise.In some eye-management clinics run by quack doctors, a new patient is treated by taking off his glasses and immediately testing his vision with an eye chart.Of course, his eyesight was at its worst.Then do eye exercises without glasses for half an hour, and then test your eyesight.His eyesight certainly improved.What the man didn't understand was that his eyesight would improve even without the eye exercises as his eyes gradually adjusted to seeing without the glasses. A second consideration is that there are some eye diseases that lessen with age.Astigmatism can sometimes lessen.Early cataracts may temporarily improve vision for a period of time.Periodic changes often occur in many eye diseases.If a patient undergoes this natural change while undergoing Bates therapy, he will often attribute the change to the therapy. Finally, and probably the most important factor, the process of "seeing" is closely related to one's mental state.If there's any value in Bates' research, it's that he puts a lot of emphasis on the mental aspects of vision.He claimed, for example, that by observing a person's refractive error with a retinoscope, he could tell whether the person was lying.This is very doubtful, but there can be no doubt that mental factors can greatly increase or decrease a man's discomfort in seeing, although examination of his eyes will reveal no organic change.One person may be driven mad by eye strain and headaches, while another person has the exact same type and degree of refractive error and doesn't care.The eye can take much more damage than people think.Given a good state of mind (which can be caused by a belief in any kind of therapy), a person can live well without glasses even with large visual aberrations.Bates himself has said that putting almost plain lenses on some people can also feel their eyesight greatly increase.What he didn't realize was that his own therapy might be effective because of this factor. In many cases, the very nature of the refractive error helps to allow a person to feel at ease without glasses.For example, a deeply nearsighted person can read without glasses with little difficulty, and if he doesn't care about blurred distance vision, he can get by without glasses.Of course, after a while without glasses, he'll learn to "see" blurry objects in the distance better than when he dropped them.He may have been much clearer with glasses, but if he was psychologically satisfied with throwing off his "eye crutch" and fancied that his vision was improving, he could give an exciting testimony to the effects of Bates' therapy.Another example is the elderly who have a natural loss of accommodation due to lens sclerosis.If by chance one eye is short-sighted and the other far-sighted, he can throw away his glasses for the rest of his life without regret.He sees far away with one eye and something nearby with the other.He can use both eyes with a proper pair of glasses, but if he believes in Bates enough, he'll be proud that he doesn't need glasses at this advanced age. It should be pointed out that eye exercises are indeed effective for some eye diseases, but these diseases are related to the muscles outside the eyeball, such as mild esotropia or diverging squint.Orthodox ophthalmologists recommend eye exercises for such ailments, but they have nothing in common with Dr. Bates' eye exercises.However, most eye problems are due to refractive errors caused by the shape of the eyeball, lens, or cornea, so no organic changes will occur no matter how much you move or shake.During World War II, the U.S. Air Force conducted a series of experiments with eye-to-eye operations.Many pilots feel that their vision has greatly improved, although examinations show no change in the retinal image.For years, a Manhattan ophthalmologist offered a reward of $1,000 to anyone whose eyes had been examined by a qualified doctor to confirm that organic changes had occurred after Bates Therapy, but no one has yet come to claim the bounty. Bates edited the magazine Enhanced Vision for several years.His assistant, Emily Learman, selected a collection of articles from this journal and published a collection in 1926 under the title "Stories from the Clinic".The medical records cited in this book are excellent evidence of the "faith healing" nature of Bates' therapy and the crudeness of his and his assistants' diagnostic methods. One medical case records an elderly woman suffering from glaucoma (sclerosis of the eyeball) in one eye and "complete glaucoma" in the other eye, resulting in total blindness.They taught her how to do palm stroking. "The pain stopped within minutes and the eyeball went soft." She was able to make out the top word on the vision chart with her blind eye.Undoubtedly, this is the highest record for glaucoma "cure" speed.How to explain this miracle? The answer is in the following passage. "She was happy and willing to talk, and I encouraged her to talk. She said she was living in a small furnished room, and ... unattended." Such a patient, lonely, old, neurotic, had nothing but to think about her There is little to do outside of being sick.Often, a kindly doctor adopts some new treatment, which brings new hope, and brings about great changes in spirit.Initially, such patients exaggerate their visual deficits and, as treatment progresses, exaggerate the degree of vision recovery if they gain confidence in the efficacy.Later, the old woman's illness relapsed.Bates visited her at her apartment, and he wrote, "Her thin face was wrinkled with pain. . . . Can imagine a daisy swaying in the breeze. I asked her to imagine her body swaying with the flower. She did, and within minutes her pain was gone and she smiled." Miss Learman's book contains a chapter describing the "cure" of 8 cases of cataract.Apparently, in these 8 cases, the opacity of the lens of the patients did not change organically, but they did enhance the ability to recognize the visual chart.Some patients may have memorized eye charts, but most patients probably believed that their eyesight had improved and that their "sight" had indeed increased.The reader may ask, if such a thing could happen, wouldn't the Bates therapy work?The answer is "Yes", if you admit that the use of Colonel Gadi Ali's colored light therapy machine has the same "curative effect". Bernal McFadden was one of the first self-proclaimed health authorities to follow Bates in his favour.We have already mentioned his advertising for Bates's early correspondence textbooks.McFadden later compiled these teaching materials into a book published in 1924 under the title "Enhancing Eyesight" by Hereward Carrington, ghostwriting for McFadden.Apparently McFadden thought the moves and swayings were overly complicated, since he replaced them with much simpler movements of rolling the eyeballs up and down, side to side, and spinning them around like Eddie Cantor.Another McFadden maneuver is to hold a pencil in your hand and look at the tip of the pencil and a distant object in turn.He also recommends frequent washing of the eyes by dipping the lids in water and opening the eyes.Dr. Bates had strongly condemned eye massage of any kind, but McFadden developed various methods of massaging the eyeball with his fingers, depending on the nature of the refractive error. One of the worst books on Bates' therapy is Guy Lord Houser's 1932 book titled Acquiring Sharp Vision Without Glasses.The book has been reprinted several times, including an abbreviated 1938 titled Good Vision Without Glasses.Hauser writes, "Thanks to the research work of this great man [Bates], a method of permanently correcting the defect of vision has been devised." To Bates' remedy he added some new movements of his own devising , called "gymnastics", and "7-day radical meal".Key ingredients in this healing meal include Houser Potassium Gravy, a variety of plant salts, mint and herbal teas, Swiss Cress, and Santé Meatless Bouillon, all available from the Milwaukee-based Houser Company arrive. The main eye diseases and Hauser's remedies are listed at the back of the book.Here's his treatment for astigmatism. "In order to eliminate fatigue and tension, first eat a 7-day radical meal... At the same time, do eye exercises, especially the first and second sets, and turn the eyeballs in all directions... At least 20-30 minutes of palm stroking every day, Wash the eyes with cold water in the morning, and apply herbal gauze patches to the eyes at noon and evening...." According to Hauser, nearsightedness was caused by restless nerves, a poor diet and eating too many acidic foods.Strabismus and presbyopia are caused by a poor diet.He recommends swinging to treat strabismus. "Twisting the swing rope up and letting it go back makes the world go round and round in circles. It's a very relaxing exercise because it forces the eye to keep moving." Today's dreaded eye disease, glaucoma, is caused by "self-intoxication, poor diet, and worry," says Hauser. It can be cured by relaxing and eating a new (Hauser) diet. "Palm stroking and rocking are effective exercises for glaucoma because they are relaxing. Ask for an osteopathic medical neck massage...." Cataract, Hauser admitted, "is a very troublesome disease. It occurs when the lens is filled with waste products. The whole body is poisoned by bad diet."The fact that there is no definitive cure for cataracts didn't bother the intrepid diet expert.His recommendations are: (1) Consume Hauser's 7-day radical meal, (2) Daily enema with warm water, add the juice of a lemon to the water, (3) Perform osteosynthesis on the neck, (4) Daily palm Massage for 30 to 60 minutes (“Palm stroking seems to have a magnetic effect on circulation. Makes the intraocular lymph flow and removes waste”), (5) sun therapy, (6) after soaking small pieces of cotton in lime water, Keep it on the eyes "for as long as possible". None of the above 6 methods will have an effect on cataracts.Nor did any of Hauser's treatments have a noticeable effect on any of the eye diseases he discussed.Falsely persuading readers to throw away their spectacles, and recommending such magic tricks as to prevent patients from seeing an ophthalmologist, is nowhere in the literature of pseudo-ophthalmology more presumptuous than Hauser. At the time of writing, there are several institutions in New York City that teach Bates therapy, notable among them is the Margaret Corbett School of Eyes.It is a branch of the School of Ophthalmology in Los Angeles.Mrs. Corbett published How to Improve Your Sight in 1938, and she also helped Huxenley improve his eyesight.A wife named Robert Selden advertised that she incorporated the "Bates Therapy" into her writings.The American Eye Training Federation, headed by Clara Hackett, opened schools in Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle, and Manhattan.Miss Hackett developed an eye disease while teaching history at a high school in Tacoma, Washington.The Bates Therapy "cured" her eye disease, and she has been teaching Bates Therapy ever since. One of America's most popular science fiction writers, Van Vogt, became a disciple of Dr. Bates, along with General Simanticus and Guy Lord Houser.He dropped his pince-nez and wrote a science fiction novel called The Chronicler, in which Bates' ideas played a major role.During this period, a friend of the author of this book played chess with him, and it is said that Van Vogt often took his opponent's pieces instead of his own.Now Van Vogt is back on his pince-nez and is busy promoting the West Coast "brain machine." Although his "sight" may have improved considerably since Aldous Huxley discovered Bates, the opacity of his cornea had not changed in any way.He exposed this dramatically recently when he spoke at a dinner in Hollywood.The following quote is from a column by Bennett Self in the Saturday Review, April 12, 1952: "He stood up to deliver his speech without glasses, and apparently he had no trouble reading the script that was on the podium. Did the eye exercises really restore his vision? As he went on and on, I and everyone present 1,200 guests stared at him in amazement.... Then he faltered suddenly - and the disturbing truth came to light. He wasn't reading his speech at all. He memorized it beforehand. To recall his speech , he brought the script closer and closer to his eyes. It was only an inch or so from his eyes, but he still couldn't read and had to reach into his pocket for a magnifying glass to see the writing. It was embarrassing... The real tragedy, however, occurs when Bates followers suffer from glaucoma, optic atrophy, or other eye conditions that require immediate treatment or blindness.There are quite a few such tragedies around every pseudo-medicalist.The lessons of these tragedies are simple and obvious to any sensible reader. The lesson is that when you come across a new medical theory that orthodox doctors generally reject, you better trust the doctor's opinion.Of course, there was always the possibility that this self-proclaimed genius was really what he claimed to be, another Pasteur far ahead of his stubborn colleagues.However, such opportunities are very rare.If there is one quack who turns out to be a genius, there are ten thousand quacks who turn out to be quacks.Many of them, as we have seen, were intelligent men who wrote and talked wittily and persuasively.But a layman in medicine must never trust unreliable judgment in dealing with the most precious of health problems.You can keep an open mind, but following the consensus of your expert physicians is the surest and wisest course of action.