The fact is that, except in rare cases, man is not a reasoning being. He is dominated by authority, and when the facts are not in accord with the view imposed by authority, so much the worse for the facts. They may, and indeed must, win in the long run; but in the meantime the world gropes needlessly in darkness and endures much suffering that might have been avoided.
--Perfect Sight Without Glasses-- W.H. Bates, 1920

A century ago--in 1898--a young doctor serving his internship at Columbia hospital in New York was experimenting with some radical ideas that are still considered strange by most medical practitioners to this day... he was encouraging his fellow doctors to- throw away their glasses and see with their eyes!

William Bates was working as a teaching assistant but was dismissed after repeatedly encouraging fellow doctors to go without the glasses recently prescribed by the chief ophthalmologist at the hospital eye clinic. The young interns were shedding their glasses as fast as they could be prescribed. The head of the department was not amused... .

Dr. Bates, who died in 1931, spent his life researching and developing a method to relieve the unnecessary suffering of people afflicted with eye disorders. Upon seeing an infant fitted with tiny glasses he remarked- "it's enough to make the angels weep."

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Rick Hubbard