“In a few generations we’ll all have four eyes, won’t we?” asked Bobs, making a pair of mock spectacles with his circled fingers and thumbs.
“Oh, let’s hope not. The cartoonists of prophecy always give the future man spectacles. But I believe that the tendency will be the other way, and that, by evolution to meet new conditions, the eye will fit itself for its work, unaided, in time. Meantime, we have to pay the penalty of the change. That’s a small price for living in this wonderful century.”
“You say that half the blind are needlessly so,” said Mrs. Clyde. “Is that from preventable disease?”
“About forty per cent, of the wholly blind. But the half-blind and the nervously wrecked victims of eye-strain owe their woes generally to sheer carelessness and neglect. By the way, eye-strain itself may cause very serious forms of disease, such as obstinate and dangerous forms of indigestion, insomnia, or even St. Vitus’s dance and epilepsy.”
“But you’re not telling us anything about eye diseases, Dr. Strong,” said Julia.
“There speaks our Committee on School Conditions, filled full of information,” said the Health Master with a smile. “Junkum has made an important discovery, and made it in time. She has found that two children recently transferred from Number 14 have red eyes.”
“Maybe they’ve been crying,” suggested Bettykin.
“They were when I saw them, acute Miss Twinkles, although they didn’t mean it at all. One was crying out of one eye, and one out of the other, which gave them a very curious, absurd, and interesting appearance. They had each a developing case of pink-eye.”
“Horses have pink-eye, not people,” remarked Grandma Sharpless.
“To be more accurate, then, conjunctivitis. People have that; a great many people, once it gets started. It looks very bad and dangerous; but it isn’t if properly cared for. Only, it’s quite contagious. Therefore the Committee on Schools, with myself as acting executive, accomplished the temporary removal of those children from school.”