CHALLENGE TO POPULAR THEORIES

The Bates system has successfully challenged old accepted beliefs of ophthalmology. For years man held the notion that vision could not be improved. One possessed either strong eyes or weak eyes, good vision or poor vision. One had to go through life just that way unless glasses could aid. Another popular theory was that all eyes, good and bad, lose their power with age, despite the fact that many persons of extreme age carry. Good vision to their graves or have vision restored (second sight) when they cease struggling with life and sit back to watch the world go by. At 40, we have been told, all eyes need reading glasses. Most eyes need bifocals or, worse yet, trifocals. This, it is said, is due to1he inevitable hardening of the lens with advancing age, which makes vision at the near point difficult without glasses as we grow older.

Now we know the fallacies that underlie these beliefs. Dr. Bates proved that the eye is easily trained. Further, he established the principle that unstrained, well-sunned eyes are not affected by age. He proved that not only can the eye be trained but that vision (the co ordination of eye- and mind) can be improved by education. A good example of the practical application of this theory is the success of the programme through which the Air Forces gave scientific visual training to their pilots in quack and accurate recognition of all types of flying craft.

The reason why eye and mind can readily be taught more accurate co-ordination is that the optic nerve is an extension of the brain; hence, is as. much a part of the brain as of the eye. The extension of this optic, nerve, opening within the eye as an inner lining, is called the retina. It acts as a sensitive plate like the film in a camera and takes the picture for the brain to develop.

Dr. Bates also established the fact that good or bad eyesight, near-sightedness or far-sightedness, is not the result of the shape of the lens in the eye. He removed the lens of a-patient's eye (the cataract operation) and still was able to teach the eye to see both near and far, just as lenseless pinhole-cameras can take pictures. This was possible, he discovered, because the eye acts on the principle of all optical projection instruments field glasses, telescopes, cameras the entire eyeball lengthening in axis to read a book and shortening itself from front to back to see the distant object. This is called eye, commodation. (When eye-accommodation is good and the eye is looking directly at an object, the eye is said to be in focus.) Dr. Bates further established that we have no control over these changes in the shape of the eyeball to accommodate for vision at the near or far point, since they are brought about by the involuntary muscles.

The involuntary muscles do as they please, and when they please. They behave normally if they are relaxed, abnormally if they are tense. Because each involuntary muscle is actually an extension of one of the long muscles attached to the outside of the eyeball, we shall refer to the entire group as extrinsic involuntary muscles.

The major portion of each of the extrinsic muscles, however, is voluntary-that is, we can control it. These voluntary muscles are the ones we use when we roll the eyes from side to side or turn them up or down. This exercising or rolling of the eyes does not cause accommodation-only relaxation will do that.

Therefore attempts to aid eye-accommodation by exercise, that is, working the voluntary muscles, have been ineffective. The reason is this: exercise is a voluntary activity. But exercise has no direct effect on the muscles we really want to reach, the involuntary ones that control the adjustment of the eye to vision at different distances.

Hence exercises do not come within the teachings of the Bates method. Exercises which bring conscious control over the eye may actually accentuate faulty vision. The purpose of the Bates method is to teach activity under relaxed conditions by which the eye and mind co-ordinate normally, thus returning the function of seeing to the involuntary system, and permitting vision to take place.