gymnasia between thirty and fifty-five per cent. of the pupils are myopic.
University students have so far been examined only in Breslau and Tübingen. I found in 1867 fifty-three per cent. among the Catholic theologues, fifty-five per cent. of the law students, fifty-six per cent. of the medical students, sixty-seven per cent. of the evangelical theologues, and sixty-eight per cent. of the students of philosophy, to be short-sighted. In July, 1880, I again examined our medical students, and found that fifty-two per cent. of those who had not passed the examen physicum, and sixty-four per cent. of the candidates who had already stood the examination, were myopic; and I am convinced that the work of preparing for the examination in this as well as in the other departments contributes to the increase of near-sightedness. Dr. Gärtner, between 1861 and 1879, examined six hundred and thirty-four students of the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Tübingen, and found that seventy-nine per cent. of them were myopic.
If we inquire into the bearing of nationality on the development of the affection, we find that in the gymnasia at Upsala thirty-seven per cent., at St. Petersburg thirty-one per cent., at Dorpat fifty-five per cent., at Lyons twenty-two per cent., at Tiflis thirty-seven per cent., at New York twenty-seven per cent., at Boston twenty-eight per cent., of the students are myopic. In the gymnasia of St. Petersburg thirty-four per cent. of the Russian, and only twenty-four per cent. of the German scholars; at Tiflis, thirty per cent. of the Russians, thirty-eight per cent. of the Armenians, and forty-five per cent. of the Georgians, were short-sighted. Of five hundred and twenty-nine teachers in Lucerne, fourteen per cent. of the Latin Swiss, twenty-four per cent. of the German Swiss, were affected. Loring and Derby observed in New York, in 1876, that fourteen per cent. of the children of Irish, twenty per cent. of American, and twenty-four per cent. of German parents, were near-sighted. At the International Congress of Physicians, held in Paris in 1867, I confidently addressed every one who wore spectacles in German, and was sure to receive a German answer. It is possible that the Germans have become more than ordinarily predisposed to short-sightedness, by the operation of compulsory education through several generations; but this can not yet be taken for granted, for relatively only a small proportion of non-German school children have been examined. The statements of all the authorities establish, however, that everywhere, and in all institutions, the number of myopes increases from class to class, and becomes really formidable in the secunda and prima of the gymnasia and real schools, and the corresponding classes of other schools. It ranges at between thirty-five and sixty per cent. of the whole number of scholars; but the proportion has been found to exceed sixty per cent. in the prima of several German gymnasia, and to rise to eighty per cent. at Erlangen, and one hundred per cent. at Heidelberg. Taking the
