W.H. Bates, M.D.
1860-1931
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The founder of the Method was a medical doctor by the name of William Horatio Bates. A rough timeline of his accomplishments is further below.
His career started out completely orthodox. He was well-known and was held in high esteem by his peers before the end of the 19th century for his mastery of ophthalmology. He was quite successful, holding various positions around New York as instructor of ophthalmology and attending physician.
Early on, he began noticing that the vision of some patients would vary and that some would see better after not having worn their properly-prescribed glasses. Investigating the matter, he found that patients would see better after resting their eyes. He began taking glasses off myopic medical students and eliminating the students' need for them. In 1896 he began what was to be many years of experimental work, gradually making the discoveries that make up the Bates Method as it is known today. He eliminated his presbyopia, a condition which was (and is) commonly held to be an inevitable result of old age. By 1913, he began treating with his methods patients with not only what was recognized as "functional" myopia but also what was held to be incurable "organic" myopia, showing those cases to be functional as well. Eventually he also treated people with other vision disorders and diseases of the eye. Various medical journals of the time published his articles about the methods he employed. He published his discoveries and methods in his 1920 book and his Better Eyesight magazines.
The things he was observing in his work were not able to be understood solely in physical terms, so he examined mental aspects associated with myopia and many other vision impairments. He found that perfect sight only existed along with complete relaxation, and imperfect sight was associated with an inappropriate mental effort. Most importantly, he found that relaxation precipitates perfect sight, not the other way around, and that by securing mental rest his patients would rid themselves of their vision problems.
However, in doing all this it was necessary for him to reject some stringently-held notions concerning sight. Among the statements he insisted upon had to do with how refractive errors are practically always functional in nature, are often more transient than had been believed, and could be cured even in long-standing cases. Despite the positive results he obtained with thousands of patients, his methods were contrary to the teachings of a hundred years and were condemned without trial - and generally still are today.
For a long period of time, he did not really have a name for his approach (other than general terms like "treatment without glasses"). He wasn't inventing anything new, but discovering correct use of the mind and eyes, so it hardly seemed right to give a name to it.
Many people have asked me what I call my treatment. The question was a very embarrassing one because I really have no name to give it, unless I can say that my methods are the methods employed by the normal eye.
... So many people ask me how my patients are benefited. Is it Christian Science, is it auto-suggestion, is it hypnotism, psychoanalysis, psychology, or has it to do in any way with mental science? The only answer that seems to me to approach the truth is "common sense." (Bates, Better Eyesight, June 1923)
By the mid-1920s, it began to be called, naturally, the Bates Method. Before his death in 1931, he gave a few laypersons some training as teachers of the Method and pass on the knowledge in an educational manner to their clients. Ophthalmology wasn't listening, but the methods would spread somehow. Thanks to those people he trained -- Emily Bates (his wife and assistant), Margaret Corbett, Cecil S. Price, and others -- the Bates Method has not been completely forgotten. Dozens of books have been published, and today there are "Bates [Method] teachers" all over the world teaching the method successfully.
This is based off of many sources, some of which are cited and listed further below.
| 1860 | Born on December 27th in Newark, New Jersey, as the son of Charles and Amelia Bates. (National Cyclopedia; New York Times) |
| 1881 | Graduated with a B.S. in Agriculture at Cornell University in New York. (National Cyclopedia) |
| 1885 | Graduated with a medical degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in New York. (National Cyclopedia) |
| 1886 |
Introduced a new operation for persistent deafness, consisting of puncturing or incising the ear drum membrane. (National Cyclopedia) While seeking to determine the therapeutic effect on the eye of the active principles of the ductless glands, he discovered the astringent and hemostatic properties of the aqueous extract of the suprarenal capsule, later commercialized as adrenalin. (National Cyclopedia) Cured a medical student of myopia for the first time. (MacFadden, xi) |
| 1886-1888 | Clinical assistant at the Manhattan Eye and Ear hospital; attending physician at Bellevue hospital. (National Cyclopedia) |
| 1886-1891 | Instructor in ophthalmology at the New York Post Graduate Hospital and Medical School. Ophthalmologists at the school put glasses on myopic doctors and Bates then had those doctors remove their glasses and cured them of myopia. Dr. Roosa, the head of the institution, expelled Bates from the institution on account of his claims. (National Cyclopedia; Better Eyesight, Nov 1919) |
| 1886-1898 | Attending physician at the New York Eye Infirmary, Northern Dispensary, Northeastern dispensary, Northwestern Dispensary, and Harlem Hospital. (National Cyclopedia) |
| 1886-1902 | Conducted research at the "Pathology Laboratory of Dr. Pruden at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University"). |
| 1894 | Invented astigmatic keratotomy, an operation to correct astigmatism (Bates, "A suggestion of an operation"; Waring). He eventually stopped performing the operation due to the discoveries he made. |
| 1896 | Resigned his hospital appointments and began to engage in experimental work. (National Cyclopedia) |
| 1903-1910 | Successfully implemented his methods for preventing myopia in schoolchildren into the public schools of Grand Forks, North Dakota (Bates, "the prevention of myopia"). |
| 1910 |
Elected president of the Grand Forks district Medical Society. |
| 1910-? | Worked as attending physician at the Harlem Hospital in New York City. |
| 1911 | Began implementing his methods for the prevention of myopia in some public schools in New York City (Bates, "Myopia prevention by teachers"). |
| 1911-1914 | Sometime in this period, Bates cured Emily C. Lierman and subsequently hired her as his assistant in experimental work in the Physiological Laboratory in the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York.(New York Times; Better Eyesight, Feb 1920, Nov 1929). He employed her as his assistant in his new practice where, instead of prescribing glasses, he taught patients how to see. |
| 1914-1923 | He and Emily worked together to hold a "Clinic day" at the Harlem Hospital three times per week, seeing approximately 50 patients per day. These were free and open to the public. (Better Eyesight, Jan 1922, May 1923, Dec 1929). |
| 1920 | Published his book, Perfect Sight Without Glasses, also called The Cure of Imperfect Sight by Treatment Without Glasses. |
| 1919-1930 | Published monthly issues of his Better Eyesight magazine. Continued to treat patients constantly for practically all forms of imperfect sight. |
| 1922 | Emily relates how he continues to work seven days a week at the rate of ten hours per day. He was 62 years old at this point (Better Eyesight, March 1922). |
| 1923 | Left the Harlem Hospital under unknown circumstances, putting an end to the tri-weekly free clinic days, and thereafter held the free clinics at another location on Saturdays. |
| 1931 | Died on July 10th in his home at the age of seventy (New York Times; National Cyclopedia). |
CITATIONS
Bates, W.H. "A suggestion of an operation to correct astigmatism." Archives of Ophthalmology. 1894. vol 23.
Bates, W.H. and Emily Lierman/Bates. Various articles. Better Eyesight. Various issues. 1919-1930.
Bates, W.H. "The prevention of myopia in school children." New York Medical Journal. July 29, 1911. 237-238.
"Bates, William Horatio." The National Cyclopedia of American Biography. vol 24, p 383-4.
"Dr. W.H. Bates Dies; An Eye Specialist." New York Times. 13 July 1931: p 13, col 1.
MacFadden, Bernarr. Strengthening the Eyes. New York: MacFadden Publications, Inc., 1925.
Waring, George O., III, M.D. "William H. Bates: The originator of Astigmatic Keratotomy and Psycho-ophthalmology." Refractive and Corneal Surgery. Jan/Feb 1989. vol 5. 56-57.