This compilation contains 44 articles about Dr. Bates, the Bates method of vision improvement,
and vision improvement in general, collected from newspapers, medical journals, and popular magazines.
The articles comprising this compilation were originally published between 1887 and 1962.
While there have been many later articles published about Dr. Bates and his work, U.S. copyright
restrictions prevent me from duplicating articles published after 1963.
As Bates gradually presented his findings in the early part of the 20th century, the reaction in the
optometric and medical communities was generally one of rejection and disdain. He was ostracized by
the medical community at large. After all, he was suggesting that he was doing what no eye doctors
before him were able to do and that they were going about the treatment of eye disorders all wrong. In
doing so, he was challenging the accepted theories that had lain as the foundation of eye care for a
hundred years, so the strong negative reaction from his peers was to be expected.
In contrast to the medical community, the public reacted so positively that the silent treatment of
the medical community wasn’t enough to eradicate the Bates method. Even some of Bates’s peers took
an open-minded position on the matter. Years after Bates’s death, the discussion was revived by British
novelist Aldous Huxley (of Brave New World fame) writing The Art of Seeing and publicly endorsing the
Bates method because of his own recovery from near-blindness using the method early in his writing
career.
Some of the articles contained herein have at times been referenced as research proving the
inefficacy of the Bates method, but as careful examination will reveal, little or no attempt was made to
disprove Bates’s findings. He was simply ignored. Some studies were conducted on vision improvement,
such as the Baltimore Project, but they had little or nothing to do with the Bates method. Several small
studies provided evidence strongly in favor of the Bates method, however – visit
www.iblindness.org/evidence for details.
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I founded iblindness.org in 2002 as I began reading books on the Bates Method and became interested in vision improvement. I believe that everyone who is motivated can identify the roots of their vision problems and apply behavioral changes to solve them.