home study.
Other requirements are suitable light and proper position, and
abolition of shiny paper, shiny blackboard, and fine print. Even after
it is easy to obtain the correction of eye defects it will still be
necessary to adapt the demands upon children's eyes to the strength and
shape of those eyes. Because we are born farsighted, nearsighted, and
astigmatic, we must be watchful to eradicate conditions that aggravate
these troubles. Finally, there is no excuse whatever for permitting the
parent of any school child in the United States to remain ignorant of
the fact that it is just as absurd to go to the druggist or jeweler for
eyeglasses as to the hardware store for false teeth.

The education of physician, oculist, and optician can be expedited by
eye tests in school and by the follow-up work of schools in removing
the prejudice of parents against glasses when needed. Because knowledge
of chemistry preceded knowledge of the human body, the teaching of
medicine still shows the effect of predilection for the remote, the
problematical, the impossible. This predilection has influenced many
specialists as well as many general practitioners, both overlooking too
frequently obvious causes that even intelligent laymen can be taught to
detect. Very naturally the man who makes money out of attention to
simple troubles has stepped into the field not as yet occupied by the
general practitioner and the specialist. Thus we have the optician, the
painless tooth extractor, and quack cures for consumption. Opticians
are placing before hundreds of thousands simple truths about the eye
not otherwise taught as yet. Because they make their money by selling
eyeglasses and because their special knowledge pertains to glasses
rather than to eyes they frequently fail to recognize their
limitations.

Physicians feel very strongly that it is as unethical for an optician
to fit eyeglasses without a physician's prescription as for a
pharmacist to give drugs without a physician's prescription. The
justification for this feeling should be based not upon the commercial
motive of the optician but upon his ignorance. A physician uninformed
as to eye troubles is just as unsafe as an optician determined to sell
glasses. It must be made unethical and unprofessional for physician and
optician alike to prescribe in the dark. Laymen and physicians must be
taught that it is just as unethical and unprofessional for oculists and
physicians to fail to br