As there is a considerable amount of interest in contact lenses it may be well for us to learn of some of the advances made in their manufacture.
For women, the wearing of the ordinary type of glasses is delayed as long as possible with the result that unnecessary and disfiguring wrinkles appear at the corners of the eyes and on the forehead.
They could avoid this damage to vision by wearing contact lenses which do not rob the eyes of their natural beauty. For men and women engaged in athletics, contact lenses fulfill a long-felt need.
In “Arizona Medicine,” Phoenix, Dr P H Case shows that the individual molding technique and the replacement of ordinary glass lenses by cheap contact lenses represent recent advancements, contact lenses may not only be used to correct errors of vision, but also as a protective device for the eye against undesirable fluids, gases or solids. In industrial plants, they are replacing the goggles formerly used.
Contact lenses with a special fluid between the lenses and the eyes are also useful in some diseases of the cornea, the front window of the eye. Thus a penicillin solution can be kept in constant contact with an ulcer of the cornea by contact lenses.
In the eye disease known a keratoconus, a hard cone-shaped deformity of the eye, the vision is poor with an ordinary lens but is quite good with contact lenses. Dr. Case points out that contact lenses are a great help to actors, aviators, chemists, dancers, swimmers and divers, lecturers, engineers, musicians, and surgeons.
One of the difficulties about using contact lenses is that when first used they cannot be worn very long at a time – perhaps an hour or two – but as the eyes adjust themselves to the lenses, four to five hours is the usual wearing time after which the buffer solution usually needs to be changed.
As it is necessary to make an individual mold or impression of each eye and correct any errors of vision, contact lenses will naturally cost more, at first anyway, than the present ordinary lenses.
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