In my practice for the last three years I find so many cases that I have not been able to get relief after correcting the astigmatism and other refractive trouble, and looking up carefully the record of the oblique and recti muscles the patient would still complain of difficulty, and I have been at a loss to account for it, but I believe the trouble is with the oblique muscles. I think we will find, if we study their action carefully, that they are the muscles that govern the eyes, and when we come fully to understand their functions in every way and how to correct them when they are at fault, even as much as the other muscles, we shall make still more progress.
I find that a certain class of cases, where there is oblique astigmatism, give me a great deal of trouble. I have very little trouble with the astigmatism if it is an angle of 180 degree or 190 degree; but when I get cases of oblique astigmatism, if I am not careful my patient will come back to me, and in that kind of cases we usually study the oblique muscles.
I have been looking up Savage’s ideas, and I find some of them pretty good, and think they would bear study. The oblique muscles will bear study, and we will reap reward and very great help in these difficult cases, especially along the line of oblique astigmatism.
DR. WILSON: I have not very much to say, Mr. Chairman, except this: we must be very careful, in my judgment, to distinguish between empirical and scientific therapeutics. If we do not, we are going to land in a very uncomfortable position from a physiological standpoint at least. Because we have found that certain remedies have been of service to us in the treatment of hyperphoria, we cannot claim that the application of that remedy to that condition is a scientific procedure.
In regard to the question that Dr. Stewart has asked as to the comparison for the results of this apparatus nd Dr. Stevens’s it is to has observed that it is precisely the same thing. The mobile principle is a mechanical principle for saving time and to insure accuracy. You can mark the prism at zero up to 10 degree and infinitesimal gradings. You don’t need to go from 1 degree to 2 degree, but you can go anything between those degrees with your instrument, as 1 1/2 or 1 1/2 can be recorded, and it can be made fine enough to measure 1/100 of a degree. I don’t know that there is any other point that has been raised that I have not touched.
