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The Doctor's Story
The Doctor's Story
[...The Doctor's Story
One of the most striking cases of the relation of mind to vision that
ever came to my attention was that of a physician whose mental
troubles, at one time so serious that they suggested to him the idea
that he might be going insane, were completely relieved when his sight
became normal. He had been seen by many eye and nerve specialists
before he came to me and consulted me at last, not because he had any
faith in my methods, but because nothing else seemed to be left far
him to do. He brought with him quite a collection of glasses
prescribed by different men, no two of them being alike. He had worn
glasses, he told me, for many months at a time without benefit. and
then he had left them off and had been apparently no worse. Outdoor
life had also failed to help him. On the advice of some prominent
neurologists he had even given up his practice for a couple of years
to spend the time upon a ranch, but the vacation had done him no good.
I examined his eyes and found no organic defects and no error of
refraction. Yet his vision with each eye was only three-fourths of the
normal, and he suffered from double vision and all sorts of unpleasant
symptoms. He used to see people standing on their heads, and little
devils dancing on the tops of the high buildings. He also had other
illusions too numerous to mention in a short paper. At night his sight
was so bad that he had difficulty in finding his way about, and when
walking along a country road he believed that he saw better when he
turned his eyes far to one side and viewed the road with the side of
the retina instead of with the center. At variable intervals, without
warning and without loss of consciousness, he had attacks of
blindness. These caused him great uneasiness, for he, was a surgeon
with a large and lucrative practice, and he feared that he might have
an attack while operating.
His memory was very poor. He could not remember the color of the eyes
of any member of his family, although he had seen them all daily for
years. Neither could he recall the color of his house, the number of
rooms on the different floors, or other details. The faces and names
of patients and friends he recalled with difficulty, or not at all.
His treatment proved to be very difficult, chiefly because he had an
infinite number of erroneous ideas about physiological optics in
general and his own case in particular. and insisted that all these
should be discussed; while these discussions were going on he received
no benefit. Every day for hours at a time over a long period he talked
and argued. Never have I met a person whose logic was so wonderful, so
apparently unanswerable, and yet so utterly wrong.
His eccentric fixation was of such high degree that when he looked at
a point forty-five degrees to one side of the big C an the Snellen
test card, he saw the letter just as black as when he looked directly
at it. The strain to do this was terrific, and produced much
astigmatism; but the patient was unconscious of it, and could not be
convinced that there was anything abnormal in the symptom. If he saw
the letter at all, he argued, he must see it as black as it really
was, because he was not color-blind. Finally he became able to look
away from one of the smaller letters on the card and see it worse than
when he looked directly at it. It took eight or nine months to
accomplish this, but when it had been done the patient said that it
seemed as if a great burden had been lifted from his mind. He
experienced a wonderful feeling of rest and relaxation throughout his
whole body.
When asked to remember black with his eyes closed and covered he said
he could not do so, and he saw every color but the black which one
ought normally to see when the optic nerve is not subject to the
stimulus of light. He had, however, been an enthusiastic football
player at college, and he found at last that he could remember a black
football. I asked him to imagine that this football had been thrown
into the sea and that it was being carried outward by the tide,
becoming constantly smaller but no less black. This he was able to do,
and the strain floated with the football, until, by the time the
latter had been reduced to the size of a period in a newspaper, it was
entirely gone. The relief continued as long as he remembered the black
spot, but as he could not remember it all the time, I suggested
another method of gaining permanent relief. This was to make his sight
voluntarily worse, a plan against which he protested with considerable
emphasis.
"Good heavens!" he said, "Is not my sight bad enough without making it
worse."
After a week of argument, however, he consented to try the method, and
the result was extremely satisfactory. After he had learned to see two
or more lights where there was only one, by straining to see a point
above the light while still trying to see the light as well as when
looking directly at it, he became able to avoid the unconscious strain
that had produced his double and multiple vision and was not troubled
by these superfluous images any more. In a similar manner other
illusions were prevented.
One of the last illusions to disappear was his belief that an effort
was required to remember black. His logic on this point was
overwhelming, but after many demonstrations he was convinced that no
effort was required to let go, and when he realized this, both his
vision and his mental condition immediately improved.
He finally became able to read 20/10 or more, and although more than
fifty-five years of age, he also read diamond type at from six to
twenty-four inches. His night blindness was relieved, his attacks of
day blindness ceased, and he told me the color of the eyes of his wife
and children. One day he said to me:
"Doctor, I thank you for what you have done for my sight; but no words
can express the gratitude I feel for what you have done for my mind."
Some years later he called with his heart full of gratitude, because
there had been no relapse...]
- Dr. W. H. Bates, September 1919
[...The Doctor's Story
One of the most striking cases of the relation of mind to vision that
ever came to my attention was that of a physician whose mental
troubles, at one time so serious that they suggested to him the idea
that he might be going insane, were completely relieved when his sight
became normal. He had been seen by many eye and nerve specialists
before he came to me and consulted me at last, not because he had any
faith in my methods, but because nothing else seemed to be left far
him to do. He brought with him quite a collection of glasses
prescribed by different men, no two of them being alike. He had worn
glasses, he told me, for many months at a time without benefit. and
then he had left them off and had been apparently no worse. Outdoor
life had also failed to help him. On the advice of some prominent
neurologists he had even given up his practice for a couple of years
to spend the time upon a ranch, but the vacation had done him no good.
I examined his eyes and found no organic defects and no error of
refraction. Yet his vision with each eye was only three-fourths of the
normal, and he suffered from double vision and all sorts of unpleasant
symptoms. He used to see people standing on their heads, and little
devils dancing on the tops of the high buildings. He also had other
illusions too numerous to mention in a short paper. At night his sight
was so bad that he had difficulty in finding his way about, and when
walking along a country road he believed that he saw better when he
turned his eyes far to one side and viewed the road with the side of
the retina instead of with the center. At variable intervals, without
warning and without loss of consciousness, he had attacks of
blindness. These caused him great uneasiness, for he, was a surgeon
with a large and lucrative practice, and he feared that he might have
an attack while operating.
His memory was very poor. He could not remember the color of the eyes
of any member of his family, although he had seen them all daily for
years. Neither could he recall the color of his house, the number of
rooms on the different floors, or other details. The faces and names
of patients and friends he recalled with difficulty, or not at all.
His treatment proved to be very difficult, chiefly because he had an
infinite number of erroneous ideas about physiological optics in
general and his own case in particular. and insisted that all these
should be discussed; while these discussions were going on he received
no benefit. Every day for hours at a time over a long period he talked
and argued. Never have I met a person whose logic was so wonderful, so
apparently unanswerable, and yet so utterly wrong.
His eccentric fixation was of such high degree that when he looked at
a point forty-five degrees to one side of the big C an the Snellen
test card, he saw the letter just as black as when he looked directly
at it. The strain to do this was terrific, and produced much
astigmatism; but the patient was unconscious of it, and could not be
convinced that there was anything abnormal in the symptom. If he saw
the letter at all, he argued, he must see it as black as it really
was, because he was not color-blind. Finally he became able to look
away from one of the smaller letters on the card and see it worse than
when he looked directly at it. It took eight or nine months to
accomplish this, but when it had been done the patient said that it
seemed as if a great burden had been lifted from his mind. He
experienced a wonderful feeling of rest and relaxation throughout his
whole body.
When asked to remember black with his eyes closed and covered he said
he could not do so, and he saw every color but the black which one
ought normally to see when the optic nerve is not subject to the
stimulus of light. He had, however, been an enthusiastic football
player at college, and he found at last that he could remember a black
football. I asked him to imagine that this football had been thrown
into the sea and that it was being carried outward by the tide,
becoming constantly smaller but no less black. This he was able to do,
and the strain floated with the football, until, by the time the
latter had been reduced to the size of a period in a newspaper, it was
entirely gone. The relief continued as long as he remembered the black
spot, but as he could not remember it all the time, I suggested
another method of gaining permanent relief. This was to make his sight
voluntarily worse, a plan against which he protested with considerable
emphasis.
"Good heavens!" he said, "Is not my sight bad enough without making it
worse."
After a week of argument, however, he consented to try the method, and
the result was extremely satisfactory. After he had learned to see two
or more lights where there was only one, by straining to see a point
above the light while still trying to see the light as well as when
looking directly at it, he became able to avoid the unconscious strain
that had produced his double and multiple vision and was not troubled
by these superfluous images any more. In a similar manner other
illusions were prevented.
One of the last illusions to disappear was his belief that an effort
was required to remember black. His logic on this point was
overwhelming, but after many demonstrations he was convinced that no
effort was required to let go, and when he realized this, both his
vision and his mental condition immediately improved.
He finally became able to read 20/10 or more, and although more than
fifty-five years of age, he also read diamond type at from six to
twenty-four inches. His night blindness was relieved, his attacks of
day blindness ceased, and he told me the color of the eyes of his wife
and children. One day he said to me:
"Doctor, I thank you for what you have done for my sight; but no words
can express the gratitude I feel for what you have done for my mind."
Some years later he called with his heart full of gratitude, because
there had been no relapse...]
- Dr. W. H. Bates, September 1919
Re: The Doctor's Story
Zetsu wrote:
> [...The Doctor's Story
>
> One of the most striking cases of the relation of mind to vision that
> ever came to my attention was that of a physician whose mental
> troubles, at one time so serious that they suggested to him the idea
> that he might be going insane, were completely relieved when his sight
> became normal. He had been seen by many eye and nerve specialists
> before he came to me and consulted me at last, not because he had any
> faith in my methods, but because nothing else seemed to be left far
> him to do. He brought with him quite a collection of glasses
> prescribed by different men, no two of them being alike. He had worn
> glasses, he told me, for many months at a time without benefit. and
> then he had left them off and had been apparently no worse. Outdoor
> life had also failed to help him. On the advice of some prominent
> neurologists he had even given up his practice for a couple of years
> to spend the time upon a ranch, but the vacation had done him no good.
>
> I examined his eyes and found no organic defects and no error of
> refraction. Yet his vision with each eye was only three-fourths of the
> normal, and he suffered from double vision and all sorts of unpleasant
> symptoms. He used to see people standing on their heads, and little
> devils dancing on the tops of the high buildings. He also had other
> illusions too numerous to mention in a short paper. At night his sight
> was so bad that he had difficulty in finding his way about, and when
> walking along a country road he believed that he saw better when he
> turned his eyes far to one side and viewed the road with the side of
> the retina instead of with the center. At variable intervals, without
> warning and without loss of consciousness, he had attacks of
> blindness. These caused him great uneasiness, for he, was a surgeon
> with a large and lucrative practice, and he feared that he might have
> an attack while operating.
>
> His memory was very poor. He could not remember the color of the eyes
> of any member of his family, although he had seen them all daily for
> years. Neither could he recall the color of his house, the number of
> rooms on the different floors, or other details. The faces and names
> of patients and friends he recalled with difficulty, or not at all.
>
> His treatment proved to be very difficult, chiefly because he had an
> infinite number of erroneous ideas about physiological optics in
> general and his own case in particular. and insisted that all these
> should be discussed; while these discussions were going on he received
> no benefit. Every day for hours at a time over a long period he talked
> and argued. Never have I met a person whose logic was so wonderful, so
> apparently unanswerable, and yet so utterly wrong.
>
> His eccentric fixation was of such high degree that when he looked at
> a point forty-five degrees to one side of the big C an the Snellen
> test card, he saw the letter just as black as when he looked directly
> at it. The strain to do this was terrific, and produced much
> astigmatism; but the patient was unconscious of it, and could not be
> convinced that there was anything abnormal in the symptom. If he saw
> the letter at all, he argued, he must see it as black as it really
> was, because he was not color-blind. Finally he became able to look
> away from one of the smaller letters on the card and see it worse than
> when he looked directly at it. It took eight or nine months to
> accomplish this, but when it had been done the patient said that it
> seemed as if a great burden had been lifted from his mind. He
> experienced a wonderful feeling of rest and relaxation throughout his
> whole body.
>
> When asked to remember black with his eyes closed and covered he said
> he could not do so, and he saw every color but the black which one
> ought normally to see when the optic nerve is not subject to the
> stimulus of light. He had, however, been an enthusiastic football
> player at college, and he found at last that he could remember a black
> football. I asked him to imagine that this football had been thrown
> into the sea and that it was being carried outward by the tide,
> becoming constantly smaller but no less black. This he was able to do,
> and the strain floated with the football, until, by the time the
> latter had been reduced to the size of a period in a newspaper, it was
> entirely gone. The relief continued as long as he remembered the black
> spot, but as he could not remember it all the time, I suggested
> another method of gaining permanent relief. This was to make his sight
> voluntarily worse, a plan against which he protested with considerable
> emphasis.
>
> "Good heavens!" he said, "Is not my sight bad enough without making it
> worse."
>
> After a week of argument, however, he consented to try the method, and
> the result was extremely satisfactory. After he had learned to see two
> or more lights where there was only one, by straining to see a point
> above the light while still trying to see the light as well as when
> looking directly at it, he became able to avoid the unconscious strain
> that had produced his double and multiple vision and was not troubled
> by these superfluous images any more. In a similar manner other
> illusions were prevented.
>
> One of the last illusions to disappear was his belief that an effort
> was required to remember black. His logic on this point was
> overwhelming, but after many demonstrations he was convinced that no
> effort was required to let go, and when he realized this, both his
> vision and his mental condition immediately improved.
>
> He finally became able to read 20/10 or more, and although more than
> fifty-five years of age, he also read diamond type at from six to
> twenty-four inches. His night blindness was relieved, his attacks of
> day blindness ceased, and he told me the color of the eyes of his wife
> and children. One day he said to me:
>
> "Doctor, I thank you for what you have done for my sight; but no words
> can express the gratitude I feel for what you have done for my mind."
>
> Some years later he called with his heart full of gratitude, because
> there had been no relapse...]
>
> - Dr. W. H. Bates, September 1919
Outdated, anecdotal, unverified, worthless!
Zetsu wrote:
> [...The Doctor's Story
>
> One of the most striking cases of the relation of mind to vision that
> ever came to my attention was that of a physician whose mental
> troubles, at one time so serious that they suggested to him the idea
> that he might be going insane, were completely relieved when his sight
> became normal. He had been seen by many eye and nerve specialists
> before he came to me and consulted me at last, not because he had any
> faith in my methods, but because nothing else seemed to be left far
> him to do. He brought with him quite a collection of glasses
> prescribed by different men, no two of them being alike. He had worn
> glasses, he told me, for many months at a time without benefit. and
> then he had left them off and had been apparently no worse. Outdoor
> life had also failed to help him. On the advice of some prominent
> neurologists he had even given up his practice for a couple of years
> to spend the time upon a ranch, but the vacation had done him no good.
>
> I examined his eyes and found no organic defects and no error of
> refraction. Yet his vision with each eye was only three-fourths of the
> normal, and he suffered from double vision and all sorts of unpleasant
> symptoms. He used to see people standing on their heads, and little
> devils dancing on the tops of the high buildings. He also had other
> illusions too numerous to mention in a short paper. At night his sight
> was so bad that he had difficulty in finding his way about, and when
> walking along a country road he believed that he saw better when he
> turned his eyes far to one side and viewed the road with the side of
> the retina instead of with the center. At variable intervals, without
> warning and without loss of consciousness, he had attacks of
> blindness. These caused him great uneasiness, for he, was a surgeon
> with a large and lucrative practice, and he feared that he might have
> an attack while operating.
>
> His memory was very poor. He could not remember the color of the eyes
> of any member of his family, although he had seen them all daily for
> years. Neither could he recall the color of his house, the number of
> rooms on the different floors, or other details. The faces and names
> of patients and friends he recalled with difficulty, or not at all.
>
> His treatment proved to be very difficult, chiefly because he had an
> infinite number of erroneous ideas about physiological optics in
> general and his own case in particular. and insisted that all these
> should be discussed; while these discussions were going on he received
> no benefit. Every day for hours at a time over a long period he talked
> and argued. Never have I met a person whose logic was so wonderful, so
> apparently unanswerable, and yet so utterly wrong.
>
> His eccentric fixation was of such high degree that when he looked at
> a point forty-five degrees to one side of the big C an the Snellen
> test card, he saw the letter just as black as when he looked directly
> at it. The strain to do this was terrific, and produced much
> astigmatism; but the patient was unconscious of it, and could not be
> convinced that there was anything abnormal in the symptom. If he saw
> the letter at all, he argued, he must see it as black as it really
> was, because he was not color-blind. Finally he became able to look
> away from one of the smaller letters on the card and see it worse than
> when he looked directly at it. It took eight or nine months to
> accomplish this, but when it had been done the patient said that it
> seemed as if a great burden had been lifted from his mind. He
> experienced a wonderful feeling of rest and relaxation throughout his
> whole body.
>
> When asked to remember black with his eyes closed and covered he said
> he could not do so, and he saw every color but the black which one
> ought normally to see when the optic nerve is not subject to the
> stimulus of light. He had, however, been an enthusiastic football
> player at college, and he found at last that he could remember a black
> football. I asked him to imagine that this football had been thrown
> into the sea and that it was being carried outward by the tide,
> becoming constantly smaller but no less black. This he was able to do,
> and the strain floated with the football, until, by the time the
> latter had been reduced to the size of a period in a newspaper, it was
> entirely gone. The relief continued as long as he remembered the black
> spot, but as he could not remember it all the time, I suggested
> another method of gaining permanent relief. This was to make his sight
> voluntarily worse, a plan against which he protested with considerable
> emphasis.
>
> "Good heavens!" he said, "Is not my sight bad enough without making it
> worse."
>
> After a week of argument, however, he consented to try the method, and
> the result was extremely satisfactory. After he had learned to see two
> or more lights where there was only one, by straining to see a point
> above the light while still trying to see the light as well as when
> looking directly at it, he became able to avoid the unconscious strain
> that had produced his double and multiple vision and was not troubled
> by these superfluous images any more. In a similar manner other
> illusions were prevented.
>
> One of the last illusions to disappear was his belief that an effort
> was required to remember black. His logic on this point was
> overwhelming, but after many demonstrations he was convinced that no
> effort was required to let go, and when he realized this, both his
> vision and his mental condition immediately improved.
>
> He finally became able to read 20/10 or more, and although more than
> fifty-five years of age, he also read diamond type at from six to
> twenty-four inches. His night blindness was relieved, his attacks of
> day blindness ceased, and he told me the color of the eyes of his wife
> and children. One day he said to me:
>
> "Doctor, I thank you for what you have done for my sight; but no words
> can express the gratitude I feel for what you have done for my mind."
>
> Some years later he called with his heart full of gratitude, because
> there had been no relapse...]
>
> - Dr. W. H. Bates, September 1919
Outdated, anecdotal, unverified, worthless!
Re: The Doctor's Story
On Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:44:32 -0700 (PDT), Zetsu <absolutelyinvincible@hotmail,com > wrote:
>...Never have I met a person whose logic was so wonderful, so
>apparently unanswerable, and yet so utterly wrong...
>
The more stories like this that Zetzu posts, the more convinced I
become that Bates was just a quack and that none of these things
ever happened. The above quote is used by quacks and charlatans
everywhere, and has been for a long, long time. That's how they
defend themselves against the logic that proves they are wrong -
by asserting that logic is useless.
I can find plenty of people who believe they were abducted by
aliens in a UFO. This story means no more than those people's stories.
On Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:44:32 -0700 (PDT), Zetsu <absolutelyinvincible@hotmail,com > wrote:
>...Never have I met a person whose logic was so wonderful, so
>apparently unanswerable, and yet so utterly wrong...
>
The more stories like this that Zetzu posts, the more convinced I
become that Bates was just a quack and that none of these things
ever happened. The above quote is used by quacks and charlatans
everywhere, and has been for a long, long time. That's how they
defend themselves against the logic that proves they are wrong -
by asserting that logic is useless.
I can find plenty of people who believe they were abducted by
aliens in a UFO. This story means no more than those people's stories.
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