As indicative of the tremendous importance of refraction in modern ophthalmic practice—at least in that of mine—I note that, in the time covered by my case records, 93 per cent, of all cases has, according to my judgment, required correction of ametropia, while but 7 per cent, required treatment of diseases of the eye alone.
Comparison of my figures with those, e.g., of European ophthalmologists, will hardly yield satisfactory results, because every case here included was tested with the patient's eyes under a mydriatic except where presbyopia was so far advanced as to make the drug unnecessary.
The patients coming to the oculist are doubtless more frequently ametropic than people that do not come, and yet probably a very small percentage of the general community is emmetropie. Of all my patients, but four have been emmetropes—i. e., about one fifth of one per cent.
As pointing to the disproportionate incidence