How Long Will It Take?

How Long Will It Take?

[...How Long Will It Take?

This question is asked so constantly by persons who wish to be cured
of imperfect sight that it seems worth while to devote a little space
to its consideration. It is impossible, of course, to answer the
question definitely. Cure is a question of the mind, and people's
minds are different. While patients who have worn glasses are usually
harder to cure than those who have not, elderly persons who have worn
them for the better part of a lifetime are sometimes cured as quickly
as children under twelve who have never worn them. These cases are
very rare, but they do occur. Some patients can look at the letters on
the test card, or in a paragraph of fine print, and imagine them at
once to be perfectly black, with the result that they immediately
become able to read them. Some patients are able to palm almost
perfectly from the start, and nearly all can do it well enough to
improve their sight; some never become able to do it until their sight
has been improved by other means.

Most patients, when they look from one side of a large letter to
another, or from one side of the card to another, can imagine that the
letter, or the card, is moving in a direction opposite to the movement
of the eye. Others, whose condition may be no worse, take a week, or a
month, or longer, to do the same thing. A patient recently treated was
able to do almost everything I asked her to at the first visit. I
began, as I always do, by directing her to close and rest her eyes,
and, as in the case of most other patients, she was able to improve
her sight materially by this method. Then she went on to do a lot of
other things, some of which very few patients can do at the first
visit, while no one but herself, so far as I can remember, was ever
able to do all of them. She was able to stare at a letter and make her
sight worse, and she was able to look from one side of it to another
and imagine that it was moving in a direction opposite to the movement
of the eye. If the letter was seen perfectly, the movement was short,
rhythmical and easy; if it was seen imperfectly, it was longer, and
irregular. She could not imagine a letter stationary, and if she tried
to imagine it so, it blurred. When she looked at a line of letters
that she could read, she realized at once that one letter was seen
best and the adjoining ones worse; and when she looked at a line that
she could not read, she noted that they were seen all alike. She
demonstrated at once - which was very remarkable, that a perfect
memory is quick and easy, and an imperfect memory slow, difficult and
even impossible; that the first relieves fatigue and the second
induces discomfort. She also demonstrated that while it was easy to
imagine that a letter remembered perfectly was swinging, she either
could not imagine such a swing in the case of an imperfectly
remembered letter, or else the swing was longer and irregular. It is
hardly necessary to say that this patient became able at once to read
the whole card, even in a dim light. It was only when she came to fine
print that she failed. She could not imagine that the letters of
diamond type were swinging. She could imagine the universal swing [1]
when she looked two inches away from the letters, but she could not
imagine it when she looked between the lines.

These peculiarities of the mind cannot be known in advance, and
therefore it is seldom possible, in any given case, to make
predictions as to the length of time that will be required for a cure.
This much can be stated, however: that marked improvement is always
obtained in a few weeks. and that all patients obtain some benefit at
the first visit. If there are any exceptions to this rule, they are so
rare that I do not remember them.

As more facts are accumulated. and better ways of presenting things
learned, it becomes possible to cure people more quickly. I can cure
people more quickly today than I did a year ago, and I expect to cure
them next year more quickly than I do today. In the last three months,
seven or eight patients have been cured in one visit, with a little
additional help over the telephone.

When patients can give considerable time to the treatment they
naturally get on faster than those who cannot or will not do this.
When they follow instructions and do not waste time in discussion, or
in carrying out theories of their own, they also get on faster. One of
the advantages that children have over adults is that there minds are
not so full of erroneous ideas, and that they are accustomed to doing
as they are told.

The chief cause of delay seems to be that people will not believe the
truth after it is demonstrated to them. You can demonstrate to anyone
in a few minutes that rest improves the vision, but the idea that
everything worth while must be gained by effort is so deeply ingrained
in the average mind that you may not in a year be able to get it out,
and so long as the patient believes that his sight can be improved by
effort, he will make little progress.

In most cases it is necessary, in order to retain what has been
gained, to continue the treatment for a few minutes every day. When a
cure is complete it is always permanent. The patient need never think
of the matter again, and may even forget how he was cured. But
complete cures, which mean the attainment, not of what is ordinarily
called normal sight, but of a measure of telescopic and microscopic
vision, are very rare; and even in these cases the treatment may be
continued with benefit, for it is impossible to set limits to the
visual powers of man, and no matter how good the sight, it is always
possible to improve it.

------------------------------------

[1] When the patient becomes able to imagine that the letters on the
test card are swinging, everything else thought of also seems to be
swinging. This is the universal swing...]

- Dr. W.H. Bates, January 1920