Fatigue of vision for near work is a common condition of the cases I am now describing, and is apt to persist long after all other troubles have vanished.

When there is no asthenopia I usually think well of the general chance of recovery; but in no case of feeble vision do I omit at some period of the treatment to have the optical apparatus of the eye looked at with care, because pure asthenopia, apart from all optical defects, is a somewhat rare symptom.
Neither am I always satisfied with the ophthalmologist's dictum that there is a defect so slight as to need no correction, being well aware, as I have elsewhere pointed out, that even minute ocular defects are competent mischief-makers when the brain becomes what I may permit myself, using the photographer's language, to call sensitized by disease.
The following illustrations of success in this mode of treatment are taken from Dr.Playfair's book:[29] "Early in October of last year I was asked to see a lady thirty-two years of age, with the following history.

She had been married at the age of twenty-two, and since the birth of her last child had suffered much from various uterine troubles, described to me by her medical attendant as 'ulceration, perimetritis, and endometritis.' Shortly after the death of her husband, in 1876, these culminated in a pelvic abscess, which opened first through the bladder and afterwards through the vagina.

Paralysis of the bladder immediately followed the appearance of pus in the urine, and from that time the urine was never spontaneously voided, and the catheter was always used.

Soon after this she began to lose power in the right leg, and then in the left, until they both became completely paralyzed, so that she could not even move her toes, and lay on her back with her legs slightly drawn up, the muscles being much wasted.