If Dr. Jeffries’s investigation in the Boston public schools and the report of the officers of the Pennsylvania Railroad are to serve as a criterion in judging of the extent to which impaired vision is developed in men, or if among them one in every twenty-five is defective in the colour sense, the inference seems unavoidable that the proportion of them unfitted for railroad and steamboat service, for military duty, and for various important government positions, must be large. Hence, by these tests alone may be observed something of the extent to which, under the higher conditions which are approaching, the imperfect development in men of this one organ (the eye) may cripple their energies and check those activities which, in many instances, are best suited to their tastes and inclinations.
Nor is this defective vision developed in men a peculiarity which is confined within the limits of our own country. In Europe, investigations analogous to those instituted in America have been followed by the same or similar results. Until a comparatively recent time this subject has received little or no attention, for the reason that the processes of civilization and the various activities of life have not, hitherto, demanded a correct or highly developed colour sense; but with the requirements of more highly civilized conditions, in vocations demanding more diversified and complicated physical and mental activities, it is plain that man, because of this organic imperfection, must labour under continuous disadvantages. Then add to defective vision his lack of physical endurance, his liability to various organic affections caused by structural defects, and his abnormal appetites which are constantly demanding for their gratification the things which are injurious to his mental and physical constitution, and we are enabled to judge, to some extent, of the obstacles against which, in the struggle for existence, the future man will find himself obliged to contend.
Not only is man’s sense of sight less perfectly developed than is woman’s, but his sense of touch is less acute. The hand, directed as it is by the brain, is the most completely differentiated member of the human structure. It may almost be said of the hand, that it assists the brain in performing its functions. The female hand, however, is capable of delicate distinctions which the male has no means of determining. A dispatch from Washington says of the women of the Treasury Department: