New Light on the Eyes - Revolutionary and scientific discoveries wich indicate extensive reform and reduction in the prescription of glasses and radical improvement in the treatment of disease such as cataract and glaucoma

New light on the eyes

Revolutionary and scientific discoveries which indicate extensive reform and reduction in the prescription of glasses and radical improvement in the treatment of diseases such as cataract and glaucoma

R. Brooks Simpkins

LONDON - VINCENT STUART LTD

FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1958 BY VINCENT STUART PUBLISHERS LTD 55 WELBECK STREET LONDON

1st digital edition 2016 by David De Angelis

Table of Contents

An Autobiographical Introduction

- 1 How We See

- 2 How Our Eyes Work

- 3 How Our Eyes Focus

- 4 Glasses

- 5 Cataract and Glaucoma

- 6 Visible Ray Therapy of the Eyes

- 7 Some Notes on Oculopathy

Suggested readings

Important Note: The visible rays of the electromagnetic-spectrum, described in chapter 6 of this book, are a natural medicine for the eyes, and, as proved by research work in other fields, for other organs and parts of the body. These visible rays must not be confused in any way with ultra-violet and X-rays, and atomic radiation.

Dedicated To

THE MILLIONS OF MY FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS-CHILDREN AND MEN AND WOMEN OF ALL AGES

The Author would like to record his thanks to R. H. Ward, novelist and playwright, for his great help in editing this book

Disclaimer:

The medical information on this book is provided as an information resource only, and is not to be used or relied on for any diagnostic or treatment purposes. This information is not intended to be patient education, does not create any patient-physician relationship, and should not be used as a substitute for professional diagnosis and treatment.

Please consult your health care provider, before making any healthcare decisions or for guidance about a specific medical condition. The author, publishers and distributors of this book disclaims responsibility, and shall have no liability, for any damages, loss, injury, or liability whatsoever suffered as a result of your reliance on the information contained in this book. The publishers and distributors do not endorse specifically any test, treatment, or procedure mentioned on the book.

An Autobiographical Introduction

WHEN I was a little boy, I had very good sight, or what is regarded as normal sight for a child, but small matters

arising in childhood often play big parts in our lives.

In those days we wore our best suits on Sundays, and were not allowed to play weekday games. Instead we had to go to Church for both the morning and the evening services. But Church was boring, except when one could let oneself go in singing a militant hymn such as 'Fight the good fight with all thy might', and the sermons bored me so excessively that Sunday after Sunday I amused myself with the visual trick of placing the face of the parson in the pulpit in the middle of a memorial plaque on the other side of the chancel. Of course I did not know then that I was deliberately forcing my eyes outwards in a divergent squint, but one Sunday after coming out of Church my sight did not seem to be quite as clear as usual.

About this time it was decided that I was ready to leave the Dame School which I had been attending since I was six, and pass on to the Grammar School. The master who conducted the entrance examination concluded it with a casual examination of my sight, using an ordinary distance test-chart, and requiring me to sort out some coloured wools. The result of this visual test was a letter to my father suggesting that my sight was not as good as it should be.

The Grammar School was a King Edward foundation which ranks to-day as a public school, but in those days, over fifty years ago, it was divided into three schools, lower, middle, and upper. There were about three hundred boys, and I became Simpkins Tertius since my two elder brothers also went to the school. So few boys wore glasses that those who did were called 'four-eyes'.

The main lower school classroom was long and narrow, but at the beginning of my first term I could read the blackboard at the front of the room from my place at the back, where, as a 1

new arrival, I shared a double desk with another boy. But the master who, except for specialised subjects such as Latin, chemistry and physics, controlled the lower school, did not like me any more than I liked him, and although at my Dame School I had proved to be a pretty good scholar in general subjects such as history, geography, and arithmetic, my new master so bullied me, and made me so afraid of him, that at the end of my first term under him I had to sit in the front row of desks to be able to see the blackboard at all; and I can well imagine that the same sort of thing still happens to boys and girls to-day.

So I was given my first pair of glasses. I do not know how much was then known of the neurology of vision, but to-day it is an established fact that 'nerves', fear and anxiety, affect the sight, though there are few indications that these factors are considered, even now, before glasses are prescribed for children and young people. And having to wear glasses had certain unhappy effects on me. I could read the blackboard, it is true, but glasses destroyed my zest for games, and gave me a sense of inferiority.

Again I wonder how many thousands of young boys and girls there are to-day whose minds are being affected in this way; for the slightest sense of inferiority inhibits potential accomplishment in many aspects of life.Whatever his physical prowess, a boy or young man, instead of unhesitatingly going to the fore, stands back for fear of breaking the glasses without which he cannot see clearly or quickly. However good-looking a girl may be, glasses mar her beauty, and many girls and young women, to my own knowledge, choose the limitations of indifferent sight rather than spoil their appearance. Many of my women patients who have overcome the need for glasses have told me with delight that now they are able to buy hats and dresses to suit their faces instead of their glasses.

The fact is that my actual need as a boy was not glasses, but, under instrumental guidance, a scientific correction of the disturbance of the normal muscular control of my eyes which I had unwittingly started by playing visual games with the parson's face and the memorial plaque in Church, and which disturbance was later aggravated by my fear of my class-master. But instead of receiving this rational treatment, of which admittedly little was known then, I was condemned to a lifelong dependence on glasses which periodically were made stronger and stronger; or rather I should have been had I not, twenty-seven years later, thrown my glasses into a drawer, determined to end the misery they were, and to end it not only for myself, but also for my fellow human beings.

I have often wondered what would be the state of my eyes and sight to-day, had I not done this. Is life just a chaotic series of chances, or is there a plan for each one of us? Perhaps this is a question which we cannot finally answer, but at least we mortals try to plan the early lives of our children in such manner as to give them as good chances as possible, and at least it is certain that many of the little things in life prove to be signposts to the observant. Thus it is my hope that some who read this book may later be able to say that, although they picked it up 'quite by chance', it gave them new hope for their eyes or their children's eyes. However that may be, I have written it for the information of those who are not satisfied with the present state of things where the treatment of the eyes is concerned.

But to continue my own story. At the age of nineteen, I lay for many weeks with both legs completely paralysed as a result of poliomyelitis, and it was then that I first conceived the idea of overcoming my own shortsight and astigmatism. It was, for the time being, only a nebulous idea, and presently it was submerged in the tolerably successful fight to overcome my paralysis sufficiently to enable me to lead a full and normal life. Little was known of polio in this country in those days, and weighty, though kindly, medical advice was neither encouraging nor helpful, so I had to find out for myself how to walk again.

Meanwhile, I was, before I fell ill, one of the earliest territorials, and I should, I suppose, have been an Old Contemptible in the first world-war, had I not been given my full military discharge in 1912. Yet such is the way things fall out that, but for this, I might never have had the chance to do research-work on the eyes.

In my twenties I became an accountant and public company secretary, the possessor of a conventional diploma of qualification by examination, which entitled me to exhibit a brass plate, s

and accept articled pupils. But the last ophthalmic surgeon whom I consulted (over thirty years ago now ), after prescribing a further increase in the strength of my glasses, suggested that I should seek other means of livelihood for the sake of my eyes. This was the same specialist who, years before, had advised my father to take me away from school at the age of fifteen, so that my eyes could be rested from study for at least six months. Perhaps he was an alarmist; I have studied all my life.

And perhaps it was a coincidence that, about the time I was thus advised to give up my profession, a friend of mine celebrated his presidency of a certain association by giving a garden-party, one of the attractions at which was a well-known clairvoyant. This man, gifted with the power of seeing things not present to the senses, startled me by asking me whether I knew that I had a job of 'social reform' to do, and became quite cross with me when I told him that all I knew was that I was a company secretary. Quite cross with him in turn, I insisted that he tell me the nature of this work of reform for which he said I was destined. Very quietly he replied that he could not do so; he could only tell me that I should start the work in my late thirties. He told me many other things. I could not scoff at him. He had never met me before, yet he knew so much about me that it was almost as though he was referring to an indexed plan. I was then in my early thirties.

My life continued unchanged for a year or two, however, during which time I met another clairvoyant whom I had never seen before, and have not seen since. She told me that I should shortly encounter an old friend 'from over the water', who would bring me into contact with something of a scientific nature, and that this would play a very big part in my life. A little later, in one of the busy main streets in Birmingham, I was hailed by an old school-friend who had just returned from America.

He was an interesting and clever fellow. He had wanted to be a doctor but his father had wanted him to be an engineer, and would not relent. Neither would my friend. One day he walked into his father's study wearing the peaked cap and uniform of a taxi-driver, and said, 'All right, Dad, you've won. I am now an engineer—at least of sorts.' But later an aunt left him a few thousand pounds, and this enabled him to go to the United States and graduate in his selected branch of medicine. It was this old friend 'from over the water' who lent me a book on the eyes by the late Dr W. H. Bates of New York. This book studied with avidity, and it induced me to start experimenting on my own badly shortsighted eyes. I was still a company secretary, but my researches into the way in which the eyes work had begun.

It was this same friend who also introduced me to visible ray therapy by demonstrating to me its efficacy as a treatment for certain conditions of the body. We frequently had lunch together, and one day when I called at his consulting-room to collect him, I was not feeling well. He just looked at me, then told me to go into his treatment-room and strip off. For the next twenty minutes he subjected my naked torso to what appeared to me (in my then ignorance) to be a powerful yellow ray, which made my skin appear golden all over. After this treatment I felt remarkably better. I did not realise then that I was destined later to evolve the method of visible ray therapy of the eyes which is described further on in this book.

What is known as the Bates System of eye-training has for many years been widely known. I wrote to Dr Bates myself, and received an encouraging reply, and for some time afterwards, while I was practising his methods on my own eyes, I received particulars of some of his current case-records. He was a very honest man, and admitted that he did not know why some of his patients were enabled to see better by (for instance) looking sideways. During the first world-war, snipers often found that they could see further and more clearly after looking upwards and inwards into the peaks of their hats, while one of the first discoveries I made was that I saw better immediately after looking at the point of a pencil three inches, or even less, from my eyes. There were already, in fact, several little signposts which indicated that the external muscles of the eyes influence their focus; and in after years a number of my patients demonstrated to me little tricks of their own devising which enabled them to see better for a moment or two.

Meanwhile, I obtained a slight improvement in my own sight by practising the Bates method. Then I asked a friendly

optician to test me for a small reduction in the strength of my glasses. He thought I was quite