The education of physician, oculist, and optician can be expedited by eye tests in school and by the follow-up work of schools in removing the prejudice of parents against glasses when needed. Because knowledge of chemistry preceded knowledge of the human body, the teaching of medicine still shows the effect of predilection for the remote, the problematical, the impossible. This predilection has influenced many specialists as well as many general practitioners, both overlooking too frequently obvious causes that even intelligent laymen can be taught to detect. Very naturally the man who makes money out of attention to simple troubles has stepped into the field not as yet occupied by the general practitioner and the specialist. Thus we have the optician, the painless tooth extractor, and quack cures for consumption. Opticians are placing before hundreds of thousands simple truths about the eye not otherwise taught as yet. Because they make their money by selling eyeglasses and because their special knowledge pertains to glasses rather than to eyes they frequently fail to recognize their limitations.
Physicians feel very strongly that it is as unethical for an optician to fit eyeglasses without a physician's prescription as for a pharmacist to give drugs without a physician's prescription. The justification for this feeling should be based not upon the commercial motive of the optician but upon his ignorance. A physician uninformed as to eye troubles is just as unsafe as an optician determined to sell glasses. It must be made unethical and unprofessional for physician and optician alike to prescribe in the dark. Laymen and physicians must be taught that it is just as unethical and unprofessional for oculists and physicians to fail to bring their knowledge within the practical reach of the masses as for the optician to advertise his wares. School tests will not have been used to their utmost possibilities until optician and physician alike take the ethical position that the first consideration is the patient's welfare, not their own profits. It must soon be recognized as unethical and unprofessional for an optician who is also a skilled physician to refer patients to a medical practitioner ignorant as to optical science.