Exercise v. Eyeglasses

Though it is popularly supposed that all boys who want to be airmen must have perfect eyesight, many an Army & Navy air cadet knows better. Eye exercises sufficiently improved his faulty eyes to give him a crack at the course. And many an enlisted man has eye exercises to thank for his uniform. Examples:

One boy who failed to get into Annapolis because of weak eyes (20/40 in one eye,* 20/80 in the other) got there after two months of exercises, has since become a flyer. Another boy was refused by the Coast Guard for 20/100 vision, got in after a month and a half of eye training. Neither the Army nor Navy keeps tab of how many of their men have eye-muscled their way in, but the American Optometric Association has records of 1,000.

Unchangeable Eyeballs? Nevertheless, very few ophthalmologists will undertake to correct nearsightedness, farsightedness or astigmatism (unequal eye images) by exercise; the practice is limited almost entirely to certain psychologists, opticians and physical therapists. Reason: different schools of thought about how the eye works.

Orthodox explanation of eye function is that the shape of the eyeball is as unchanging as a glass eye; focusing is done by the elastic lens at the front of the eye; the six muscles around each eye have no function except to turn the eyeball. In myopia (nearsightedness) the eyeball is usually long from front to back; in far-sighted people it is often short. In a nearsighted eye, the image falls in front of the retina; in a farsighted eye, behind the retina. Astigmatism is usually laid to slight eye distortions. As orthodox doctors agree that a patient's efforts can not alter the shape of an eyeball, they accept distortions as final, prescribe glasses.

But they use exercises for difficulties which they recognize as muscular (cross eyes, walleyes, etc.). Exercise equipment may be simply a pin which a patient watches while it is brought up to his nose, or a complex instrument like the synoptophore, third cousin to a stereoscope, which not only exercises eyes but helps diagnosis as well. An eye-exerciser sponsored by American Optical Co.'s Dr. J. F. Neumueller (see cut) combines mirrors, lenses, lights and stereoscopic images to give eye muscles a strenuous workout.

With & Without Bates. Optical orthodoxy is just a finger-snap to many U.S. therapists, whose offices have as many discarded eyeglasses as Lourdes has crutches. They will try to fix almost any eye disorder (except infections, tumors, etc.) by exercise. Some follow the theory of the late Dr. William H. Bates (died 1931) that the six outside eye muscles not only turn the eye but change the shape of the eyeball.

Among present-day Bates disciples are Mrs. Bates and Optometrist Harold Peppard of Manhattan. Novelist Aldous Huxley was so much helped by the Bates method that he wrote a book about it (The Art of Seeing).

Mrs. Bates sticks closest to her late husband's teaching. To get eye relaxation a patient covers his eyes with his hands and thinks of blackness ("palming"); blinks frequently. He practices reading fine print. He "suns" his eyes (rolls his head while glancing sunward). Mrs. Bates has successfully treated many patients, including Ignace Jan Paderewski.

Batesian Peppard features "the long swing" (a relaxing exercise done by swaying the body from side to side); the deliberate reading of each letter in a word separately; tennis (especially for nearsighted people, to promote shifting and prevent staring); and reading upside down.

Samuel Renshaw, Professor of Experimental Psychology at Ohio State University, believes that training may not only correct many eye defects but also improve normal vision. His methods have been adopted by Ohio State's Naval Recognition School, which has sent some 500 Navy teachers out to help sailors recognize enemy aircraft, spot distant periscopes and life rafts.

The indisputable point about eye exercise: sometimes it works.

That is, he could see at 20 feet what he should have seen at 40.

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