ONE of the nation’s most influential medical eccentrics, whose work is still accepted by many thousands of intelligent but ill-informed people, was Dr. William Horatio Bates, an eye, ear, nose, and throat specialist of New York City. He was the first important figure in the modern cult of revolt against spectacles and the reliance on eye exercises for the treatment of visual defects.
Dr. Bates was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1860. His early medical record is impressive—graduate of Cornell in 1881; medical degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons, 1885; clinical assistant at Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital; attending physician at Bellevue Hospital and later at the New York Eye Infirmary. From 1886 to 1891 he taught ophthalmology at the New York Postgraduate Medical School and Hospital.
In 1902, Dr. Bates suddenly vanished. Six weeks later his wife learned he was working as an assistant at Charing Cross Hospital, in London, where he had been taken in as a patient. She went to London immediately and found him in a state of exhaustion, with no memory of what had happened. Two days later he vanished again. Mrs. Bates searched for him on the Continent. She came back to America and searched. She was still looking for him when she died.
Exactly how Dr. Bates was found again is still wrapped in obscurity. According to his obituary in the New York Times, July 11, 1931, a fellow oculist found him by accident in 1910. He had been practicing in Grand Forks, North Dakota, for six years. Apparently Bates was persuaded to return to Manhattan, where he shared offices with his discoverer and served as attending physician in Harlem Hospital until 1922. He remarried, and was survived by his wife (it was his third) when he died in 1931.
In 1920, Dr. Bates issued at his own expense a book titled Cure of Imperfect Eyesight by Treatment Without Glasses. It was published with the imprint of the Central Fixation Publishing Company, New York City, and opens with a tribute to the author by the Rev. Daniel A. Poling. (Bates attended Rev. Poling’s church, and also treated his eyes. The Reverend today credits Bates for the fact that at sixty-seven he still gets along without glasses.) A revised, condensed version of the book appeared twenty years later.
Dozens of books by other writers have been little more than restatements of Dr. Bates’ views. Sight Without Glasses, 1944, by Harold M. Peppard,1 has been a popular American work, and in England, The Improvement of Sight, 1934, by Cecil S. Price. As late as 1948 Random House issued See without Glasses, by Ralph J. MacFayden—another book based on Bates’ theories.
The original Bates work is a fantastic compendium of wildly exaggerated case records, unwarranted inferences, and anatomical ignorance. Much of the material had appeared earlier in articles which Bates contributed to several medical journals, and in a correspondence course on eye-training written in collaboration with Bernarr Macfadden. (The course was heavily advertised in Macfadden’s Physical Culture magazine.) More than fifty photographs are reproduced in the book, many of them exceedingly curious. One, for example, is titled Myopes who never went to school or read in the subway. It pictures the faces of four nearsighted animals—an elephant, buffalo, monkey, and pet dog.
At the heart of Dr. Bates’ views is his theory of accommodation. “Accommodation” is a term for the focusing process which takes place within each eye when you shift attention to objects at varying distances. One of the best established facts in eye anatomy is the fact that this adjustment involves an alteration in the shape of the lens. A tiny muscle called the ciliary muscle causes the lens to become more convex as the eye is focused on closer objects. This change of the lens has been photographed in detail, and measured with a high degree of accuracy.2 Dr. Bates, however, denied all this categorically. The lens, he stated, is “not a factor in accommodation.” Instead, the focusing is accomplished by an alteration in the entire length of the eyeball, in turn brought about by two muscles on the outside of the eye!
To support this odd theory, Dr. Bates records (with many photographs) some experiments he performed on the eye of a fish. After the lens of the fish eye had been removed, the eye was still able to accommodate. Dr. Bates was unconcerned with the fact that a fish eye has very little resemblance to a human eye. Some mammalian experiments, chiefly on rabbits and cats, are also described. Unfortunately, what the description reveals most clearly is an almost total lack of laboratory competence.
When an eye doctor puts drops in your eyes, the power of accommodation is temporarily killed. This has been proved to be due to paralysis of the muscles controlling the lens and pupil, but Dr. Bates thought otherwise. The loss of accommodation, he asserted, does not occur until the drug affects the muscles outside of the eye. Moreover, he claimed to have observed patients whose lenses had been removed by a cataract operation and who still accommodated with ease! Curiously, this has never been observed by any other eye man. Actually, Bates’ theory of accommodation (so necessary to explain the value of his exercises) is so patently absurd that even most of his present-day followers have discarded it.
The cause of all refractive errors (nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism), according to Bates, is simply “strain,” in turn due to an “abnormal condition of mind.” “The origin of any error of refraction,” he wrote, “of a squint, or of any other functional disturbance of the eye, is simply a thought—a wrong thought—and its disappearance is as quick as the thought that relaxes. In a fraction of a second the highest degree of refractive error may be corrected, a squint may disappear, or the blindness of amblyopia may be relieved. If the relaxation is only momentary, the correction is momentary. When it becomes. permanent, the correction is permanent.”
Glasses cannot cure this strain, Bates believed. In fact, they make the cure impossible because the eye adjusts to them, then the strain makes the eye get steadily worse so that stronger and stronger glasses are necessary. In Bates’ opinion, glasses are simply “eye crutches.” They should be tossed away.
The Bates system is designed to relieve strain. This involves “central fixation”—learning to see what is in the center of vision, without staring. Here is what Dr. Bates had to say about its importance:
“Not only do all errors of refraction and all functional disturbances of the eye disappear when it sees by central fixation, but many organic conditions are relieved. I am unable to set any limits to its possibilities. I would not have ventured to predict that glaucoma, incipient cataract, and syphilitic iritis (inflammation of the iris of the eye) could be eliminated by central fixation, but it is a fact that these conditions have disappeared when central fixation was attained. Relief was often obtained in a few minutes, and, in rare cases, this relief was permanent. . . . Infections, as well as diseases caused by protein poisoning and the poisons of typhoid fever, influenza, syphilis and gonorrhea, have also been benefited by it. Even with a foreign body in the eye there is no redness and no pain so long as central fixation is retained.”
To achieve central fixation, or learning to see without strain, Dr. Bates proposed the following exercises:
(1) “Palming.” The patient puts the palms of both hands over his eyes (without pressing or rubbing), and tries to think of “perfect black.” When the patient is able to see a pure blackness, there is an immediate improvement of sight. Dr. Bates tells of one patient, a man of seventy with astigmatism and incipient cataract, who was completely cured after having palmed continuously for 20 hours! “The smaller the area of black which a person is able to remember,” wrote Bates, “the greater is the degree of relaxation indicated.” To achieve this, he recommended thinking of a large black area, such as the top letter on an eye test chart, then proceeding to smaller and smaller letters until a period is reached. “Instead of a period, some people find it easier to remember a colon,” he wrote, “. . . or a collection of periods, with one blacker than all the others, or the dot over a small I or J. Others, again, prefer a comma to a period.”
If black bores or depresses you, then a color with more pleasant associations is best. “One woman’s sight,” Bates declared, “was corrected by the memory of a yellow buttercup, and another was able to remember the opal of her ring when she could not remember a period.”
2) The “shift” and the “swing.” By shifting, Dr. Bates meant moving the eye back and forth so that one gets an illusion of an object “swinging” from side to side. The shorter the shift, the greater the benefit. You can even close the eyes and make a mental image swing. Alternating visual and mental swinging is particularly beneficial. After one masters the art of shifting and swinging, he finally attains what Bates called the “universal swing.” Here are his own words about it:
“When swinging, either mental or visual, is successful, a person may become conscious of a feeling of relaxation which is manifested as a sensation of universal swinging. This sensation communicates itself to any object of which a person is conscious. The motion may be imagined in any part of the body to which the attention is directed. It may be communicated to the chair in which a person is sitting, or to any object in the room, or elsewhere, which is remembered. The building, the city, the whole world may appear to be swinging.”
In addition to palming, shifting, and swinging, Bates also recommended reading under unusually adverse conditions—such as when lying on the back, riding a bus or train, in dim light, or in bright sunlight. The eyes are also strengthened by looking directly at the sun for short moments so that the beneficial rays may bathe the retina (a practice, by the way, which may easily cause permanent retinal damage).
Every eye doctor except Bates had assumed that presbyopia was a normal inability to accommodate that accompanies the aging process. Dr. Bates soon set them straight. “The truth about presbyopia,” he wrote, “is that it is not ‘a normal result of growing old’. . . . It is caused not by a hardening of the lens but by a strain to see at the near-point. It has no necessary connection with age. . . . It is true that the lens does harden with advancing years, just as the bones harden . . . but since the lens is not a factor in accommodation, this fact is immaterial. Also, while in some cases the lens may become flatter or lose some of its refractive power with advancing years, it has been observed to remain perfectly clear and unchanged in shape up to the age of ninety. Since the ciliary muscle is not a factor in accommodation either, its weakness or atrophy can contribute nothing to the decline of accommodative power.”
Squinting, specks in the eye, and even the twinkling of stars are all due to eye strain, according to Bates. To physicists, there is little mystery about star twinkling. It is due to constantly changing currents of air with different densities, and hence different refractive powers. But to Bates, twinkling is in the mind. If you look at the stars without strain, they cease to twinkle. “. . . when the illusion of twinkling has been produced, one can usually stop it by ‘swinging’ the star. On the other hand, one can make the planets or even the moon twinkle, if one strains sufficiently to see them.”
In England, Dr. Bates’ most distinguished convert was Aldous Huxley, the victim of an early eye infection which left his corneas permanently scarred. After trying the Bates system he felt that his vision had greatly benefited, and in 1942 wrote a book called The Art of Seeing—a book destined to rank beside Bishop Berkeley’s famous treatise on the medicinal properties of “tar water.” Huxley summarizes Bates’ theories, and adds a few additional forms of therapy such as juggling, and playing dice and dominoes. Sitting far in the rear of a movie theater is valuable exercise, he declares, for extremely nearsighted eyes. Also good for the same ailment is closing the eyes and imagining that you are holding a rubber ring between the thumb and finger. You squeeze the ring into an ellipse, then let it spring out again, and continue until it becomes tiring.
The most interesting practice recommended by Huxley is what he calls “nose writing.” You imagine that your nose is extended forward about eight inches, like Edward Lear’s “Dong with the luminous nose.” Then you close your eyes and pretend the nose is a pencil. By moving the head you write an imaginary signature in the air. “A little nose writing, followed by a few minutes of palming . . . will result in a perceptible temporary improvement of defective vision,” he writes. If you keep it up, it gradually becomes permanent.
Huxley’s explanation of why palming works, sounds like something Mesmer, the discoverer of “animal magnetism” might have said. “. . . all parts of the body carry their own characteristic potentials; and it is possible that the placing of the hands over the eyes does something to the electrical condition of the fatigued organs—something that reinvigorates the tissues and indirectly soothes the mind.”
Dr. Bates died in 1931, but his eccentric methods have been kept alive by numerous disciples throughout the country. In England and Germany during the twenties, dozens of schools sprang up to teach the Bates method. Under Hitler it blossomed into a widespread cult. There is no question that thousands of patients imagined they were benefited. How can this be explained in view of the fact that there is not the slightest factual foundation for Bates’ theory of accommodation or for the value of his exercises?
The answer is many-factored. In the first place, there are many optometrists who will sell a pair of glasses to a patient who does not really need them. After wearing the glasses for a time, their eyes adjust to them, so that when the glasses are first removed, the vision is noticeably poorer. After a week or so without the spectacles, the vision will become more normal. If the person is palming and shifting during this period, he will attribute the improved vision to the exercises. In some eye exercise clinics operated by quacks, the procedure with a new patient is to remove his glasses and immediately test his vision with an eye chart. Naturally, his vision will be at its worst. Then after a half-hour of exercises without glasses, he is tested again. Naturally his vision has improved. What he fails to realize is that the same improvement would have occurred without the exercises, as his eyes slowly adjusted to seeing without the spectacles.
A second point to consider is that a number of eye defects may change for the better as a person ages. Astigmatism sometimes alters beneficially. An incipient cataract may be heralded by a temporary phase of much improved vision. Many diseases of the eye go through cyclical changes. If the patient is following the Bates system when a natural change of this sort occurs, he will tend to credit the system for it.
Finally—and this is probably the most important factor of all—the process of “seeing” is deeply involved with one’s mental attitude. If there is any value in Bates’ work it is his strong insistence on the mental side of vision. He claimed, for example, he could tell when a person was lying by observing his refractive error through a retinoscope. This is highly doubtful, but there is no question that mental factors may greatly aggravate or alleviate a person’s discomfort in seeing, even though an examination of his eyes will show no organic changes. One person may be driven almost crazy by eyestrain and headaches, and another person, with exactly the same type and amount of refractive error, will not be bothered at all. The eye can take far more punishment than people realize. Given the right frame of mind—which may be induced by faith in any kind of treatment—a person with even a large visual error may be able to toss away his glasses and get along comfortably. Bates himself wrote about how some persons found their vision much improved after they had been given glasses which were almost plain glass. What he did not realize was the possibility that his own system might operate along similar lines.
In many cases, the nature of the refractive error is an aid in enabling a person to feel comfortable without his glasses. An extremely nearsighted patient, for example, may have little difficulty reading with unaided eyes, and if he is not bothered by hazy distant vision he can manage fairly well without spectacles. Naturally, after going for a while without them he will learn to “see” blurred objects in the distance better than he could immediately after discarding his glasses. He could see a great deal better with glasses, but if he gets psychic satisfaction out of not leaning on “eye crutches,” and fancies his vision is improving, he will be able to give stirring testimonials about the value of Bates’ methods. Another example is that of the elderly man who has a natural loss of accommodating power due to the hardening of his lenses. If one eye happens to be nearsighted and the other farsighted he can throw away his spectacles and get along without much trouble for the rest of his life. One eye does the distant seeing, and the other eye does the close-up work. With a proper pair of bifocals he could use both eyes all the time, but if he is sufficiently sold on Bates he will take great pride in the fact that even at his age glasses are unnecessary.
A few eye disorders, it should be pointed out, do respond to exercises—but these are disorders which involve the exterior muscles, such as partially crossed eyes, or walled eyes. Exercises for ailments of this sort are prescribed by orthodox eye doctors, and have nothing in common with the exercises of Dr. Bates. Most eye defects, however, are refractive errors due to the shape of the eye, lens, or cornea, and no amount of shifting or swinging will produce an organic change. During the past war the Air Force conducted a series of experiments with eye exercises. Many pilots thought their sight much improved even though examinations showed that the image on the retina remained unchanged. For many years a Manhattan eye doctor had a standing and unclaimed offer of $1,000 to any patient with a refractive error who practiced the Bates system, and whose eyes showed organic improvement when tested by a competent doctor.
For several years Bates edited a magazine called Better Eyesight. A collection of articles from it was made by Emily C. Lierman, the doctor’s assistant, and published in 1926 with the title, Stories from the Clinic. Its case records are the best evidence in print of the “faith cure” aspect of Bates’ methods, and the careless diagnosing procedures of the doctor and his helpers.
In one case an aged woman had glaucoma (a hardening of the eyeball) in one eye and “absolute glaucoma” in the other, rendering it totally blind. She was shown how to palm. “In just a few minutes the pain ceased and the eyeball became soft.” Through the blind eye she was able to read the top letter of the test chart. This is unquestionably the fastest “cure” of glaucoma on record. How can such a miracle be explained?
The answer is suggested in the next sentences. “She was very happy and wanted to talk, which I encouraged her to do. She said she was living in a small furnished room and . . . had no one to look after her.” Such a patient—lonely, old, neurotic—has little to do except meditate on her infirmities. Often a new type of treatment, by a friendly doctor, will offer new hope and with it a great change in mental outlook. At the beginning, such patients will exaggerate the poorness of their vision, and as the therapy progresses, if they have faith in its curative power, will exaggerate in the opposite direction. Later, this particular lady suffered a relapse and was visited in her room by the author, who writes: “Her thin face was lined with pain. . . . I began to talk to her about the days when she did not suffer. . . . She began to palm... and became able to imagine a daisy waving in the breeze. I asked her to imagine that her body was swinging with the flower. She did this, and within a few minutes her pain left her and she smiled.”
One chapter of Miss Lierman’s book describes eight cataract “cures.” In these cases there can be no doubt that no organic changes occurred in the clouded lenses of the patients, yet all of them improved in their ability to read the test card. In some cases, perhaps, they had memorized the card, but in most cases, the improvement was probably real enough in the patient’s mind to result in an actual improvement of “seeing.” If such improvement can take place, you may ask, then is not the Bates system of value? The answer is “yes” if you are willing to grant an equal value to the “cures” which follow the drinking of Hadacol, or the use of Colonel Ghadiali’s colored light machine.
Bernarr Macfadden was one of the first self-styled health authorities to get on the Bates bandwagon. We have already mentioned his promotion of an early correspondence course by Bates. Later this was formed into a book, ghosted for Macfadden by Hereward Carrington, and published in 1924 under the title, Strengthening the Eyes. Evidently Macfadden thought the shift and swing too complicated, because he substitutes for it the much simpler exercises of moving the eyes up and down, from side to side, and rolling them about like Eddie Cantor. Another Macfadden exercise is to hold up a pencil and alternately focus on the tip of the pencil and a distant object. Frequent bathing of the eyes, by opening them while the face is submerged in a bowl of water, is also recommended. Dr. Bates had strongly condemned any type of eye massage, but Macfadden worked out a number of finger massages for the eyeball, the type of treatment varying with the nature of the refractive error.
The all-time low, however, in books on the Bates system was achieved in 1932 by none other than Gayelord Hauser. It was called Keener Vision without Glasses, and ran through many editions, including a cut version called Better Eyes without Glasses, 1938. “Thanks to the research of this great man [Bates],” Hauser writes, “a permanent correction of defective eyesight has been developed.” In addition to the Bates methods, he adds some new exercises of his own which he calls “gymnastiques,” and also the “Seven-day elimination diet.” Important ingredients of this diet are Hauser Potassium Broth, Nu-Vege-Sal, Swiss Kriss, Peppermint and Strawberry Teas, and Santay Meatless Bouillon, all of which were obtainable from Hauser’s firm in Milwaukee.
In the back of the book are listed the major eye ailments along with Hauser’s methods for correcting them. Here is his treatment for astigmatism. “To overcome strain and tension, first of all, follow the Seven-day Elimination diet. . .and do the eye gymnastiques, especially Nos. 1 and 2 and rolling the eyes in all directions. . . . Do at least twenty to thirty minutes of palming each day, use the cold water eye bath in the morning, and apply the herbal eye-pads noon and night. . . .”
According to Hauser, nearsightedness is due to nervousness, bad diet, and too many acid foods. Crossed-eyes, as well as presbyopia, are attributed to bad diet. For cross-eyes he recommends swinging on a rope swing. “Twisting the rope and letting it unwind makes the world whirl around. It is a very relaxing exercise as it forces constant shifting of the eyeball.”
The dread eye disease of glaucoma is due, says Hauser, to “autointoxication, faulty foods, and worry.” It is corrected by relaxation and a new (Hauser) diet. “Palming and swinging are valuable exercises in glaucoma because they are so very relaxing. Have the neck worked on by an osteopath. . . .”
Cataract, Hauser admits, “is a most troublesome condition. It occurs when the lens becomes congested with waste. The entire body is toxic, because of faulty diet.” The fact that there is no known cure for cataract does not daunt the intrepid diet expert. He recommends (1) the Hauser Seven-day Elimination Diet, (2) flushing the bowels daily with a warm water enema, to which the juice of one lemon is added, (3) osteopathic treatments for the neck, (4) palming thirty to sixty minutes a day (“Palming seems to have a magnetic effect on circulation. It actually seems to flush and reflush the eyes with more lymph, and carries away waste”), (5) sun treatments, (6) soaking little pads of cotton in lime juice and leaving them on the eyes “as long as possible.”
Not one of the above six procedures will have the slightest effect on a cataract. Nor will any of Hauser’s treatments have a significant effect on any of the eye ailments he discusses. To mislead the reader into tossing away his glasses, stop seeing his eye doctor, and relying on such magic is surely an act of arrogance hard to match in the literature of pseudo-ophthalmology.
At the time of writing, several organizations in New York City are teaching the Bates system—notably the Margaret D. Corbett School of Eye Education, a branch of the parent school in Los Angeles. Mrs. Corbett is the author of How to Improve Your Eyes, 1938, and was the teacher responsible for Huxley’s improved vision.3 A Mrs. Robert W. Selden advertises that she is “incorporating the Bates system” in her work. The American Association for Eye Training, under Clara Allison Hackett, has schools in Los Angeles, San Diego, and Seattle, as well as in Manhattan. Miss Hackett was teaching history in a Tacoma, Washington, high school when her eyes went bad. The Bates system “cured” her and she has been teaching Bates ever since.4
A. E. van Vogi, one of the most popular of American writers of science fiction, fell for Dr. Bates about the same time he fell for General Semantics and Gayelord Hauser. He threw away his pince-nez and wrote a science-fiction novel called The Chronicler in which the views of Bates play an important role. A friend of mine who played chess with him during this period reports that van Vogt frequently picked up an opponent’s piece instead of his own. The pince-nez is back at the moment, and van Vogt is currently preoccupied with the promotion of west coast dianetics.
Although Aldous Huxley’s “seeing” may have improved considerably since he discovered Bates, there have been no changes in the opacities of his corneas. This was dramatically revealed recently when he spoke at a Hollywood banquet. The following quotation is from Bennett Cerf’s column in The Saturday Review, April 12, 1952:
“When he arose to make his address he wore no glasses, and evidently experienced no difficulty in reading the paper he had planted on the lectern. Had the exercises really given him normal vision? I, along with twelve hundred other guests, watched with astonishment while he rattled glibly on. . . . Then suddenly he faltered—and the disturbing truth became obvious. He wasn’t reading his address at all. He had learned it by heart. To refresh his memory he brought the paper closer and closer to his eyes. When it was only an inch or so away he still couldn’t read it, and had to fish for a magnifying glass in his pocket to make the typing visible to him. It was an agonizing moment. . . .”
The real tragedies occur, however, when a Bates enthusiast suffers from glaucoma, atrophy of the optic nerve, or some other ailment which may demand immediate medical attention before it leads to blindness. Such tragedies cluster about the work of every medical pseudo-scientist. And they serve to point up, for any intelligent reader, a very simple and obvious moral.
The moral is that when you encounter a new medical theory, universally condemned by the “orthodox,” you will do well to take their word for it. It is always possible, of course, that the self-styled genius may be what he claims to be—another Pasteur, years ahead of stubborn colleagues. But the odds are heavily against it. For every quack who later proves to be a genius, there are ten thousand quacks who prove later only to be quacks. Many of them, as we have seen, are brainy men who write and speak with great authority and persuasion. As a medical layman, however, your health is much too precious to trust to your own faulty judgment. You may keep your mind open, but to rely on the consensus of informed medical men is the soundest and sanest course of action.