is often so scarred as to make
vision imperfect; second, myopia, or progressive shortsightedness, a
condition in which the axis of the eye gradually grows longer. This
lengthening is accompanied by stretching of the eyeball, and such
children always run the risk of the inner and most important part of the
wall of the eye, the retina or nerve layer, being torn away, and
blindness resulting. When nearsightedness is discovered early, and
glasses are given that make distant vision normal, and all needless near
work forbidden, the myopia may be held in check, and any considerable
increase prevented. Teachers are usually the first to notice such
defects, but many parents do nothing when their attention is called to
the matter. But happily these conditions are improving, and the school
nurse and school clinic, and all the clinics maintained by public and
private charities, are accomplishing wonderful results. When preventive
medicine and preventive social service are joined in the effort to help
mankind, there must result a saving of our most precious physical
possession, and an addition to human joy. The National Committee for the
Prevention of Blindness and Conservation of Vision, with headquarters at
130 East Twenty-second street, New York City, carries on a ceaseless
campaign of enlightenment by means of pamphlets, lectures, charts,
lantern slides and posters, and the work of this society is directed by
Mr Edward M. Van Cleve, Superintendent of the School for the Blind in
New York City. The leading oculists of the United States are members of
the society. Charts and lantern slides are loaned to societies for the
prevention of blindness in the various states, and pamphlets on many
important topics are sold at a nominal cost. When addressing a large
gathering in New York, and urging the wisdom of publicity, Dr De
Schuynitz said: "We are here to help in the work of health education, of
eyesight protection; we are to call on society for aid in devising
measures, and for means to carry them out, in order that effective
results shall merge into perfect victory. We are here, too, I take it,
to cure those who are dull-sighted in this regard, so that, with vision
cleared, they shall join in the struggle for ocular conservation and
make it possible to give sweetness of disposition and ever-present
cheerfulness, not to the blind, the good God sees to that, but to those
who shall be saved from blindness."

In New York and Boston, the