A Little History of the Bates Method of Better Eyesight

The field of Holistic Vision Education has its roots in the Bates Method and in Vision Therapy. Dr. William Horatio Bates was a pioneering ophthalmologist who practiced in the early 1900s. Dr. Bates noticed that when he prescribed lenses, his patients' vision worsened. He realized that glasses were relieving symptoms but not correcting the causes of poor vision. His life's work was to develop methods to teach people to improve their vision.

WILLIAM HORATIO BATES

A Chronological Biography

1860 Born on 23 December in Newark, New Jersey, son of Charles and Amelia (Halsey) Bates.

1881 Graduated A.B. from Cornell University in Agriculture (from Cornell University Records in Fred Mayer material).

1883 Married Edith Kitchell of New York City.

1885 Received medical degree, MD, from College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University.

1886 Published article, "A New Operations for the Relief of Persistent Deafness."

1886 Death of his first wife.

1885-? Clinical assistant at Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital. Later, Attending physician at New York Eye Infirmary

1886-88 Attending physician at Bellevue Hospital

1886-96 Attending physician at Northeastern Dispensary.

1886-91 Instructor in Ophthalmology at the New York Postgraduate Medical School and Hospital: expelled by its head (Dr. St. John Roosa) in 1891 for injuring reputation of the school by claiming to cure myopia.

1890 Published article, "Secondary Cataract; An Experimental Study."

1892 Published article, "Notes on Spasm of the Accommodation."

1893 Year from which Bates dated the evolution of his method (in Better Eyesight - however, he was clearly interested in the possibilities of "eye education" a few years earlier, and Macfadden gives the date of 1886.)

1894 Discovered the stringent and haemostatic properties of aqueous extract of suprarenal capsule (later called adrenalin): announced discovery in a paper read before the New York Academy of Medicine in 1896.

1895 Resigned hospital appointments for several years of experimental work.

1898 Published, "Suture of the Cornea after Removal of the Lens; An Experimental Study."

1901 Published article on extract of suprarenal and its use in optic surgery.

1902 Alleged disappearance of Dr. Bates from his residence at 567 Park Avenue (last seen 30 August) - at work on a medical book. Found by his (second) wife at Charing Cross Hospital, London, apparently suffering from aphasia; she took him to Savoy Hotel but he again disappeared. (Source: obituary in New York Times, 11 July 1931).

1903 Account of Dr. Bates' disappearance in The New York World, Sunday Magazine May 10th, together with photographs of him taken in 1902 in Rhode Island, of his second wife onboard ship searching for her husband and of their son, Halsey. [The evidence suggests that Dr. Bates never left America and that Mrs. Bates was fantasizing]. ]

1903 Bates introduced Snellen charts into schools of North Dakota: in operation for eight years.

1908-13 Halsey Bates (son) at Harvard University

1910 Dr. Bates 'discovered' by fellow oculist Dr. J. E. Kelly (one time Professor of Anatomy at the Postgraduate school) practicing in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The two men set up offices in New York. (Source: obituary in New York Times.) While living in North Dakota, became state champion at tennis (Source: Cyclopedia article, 1935).

1911? Became attending physician at Harlem Hospital.

1912 Emily C. Lierman, 31, first visited Dr. Bates on January 3rd- obtained freedom from pain and perfect sight in two days. (Became his clinic nurse at the outpatient department of the Harlem Hospital for nine years, and assists him during six years of experimental research).

1912 Approximate year in which Bates cured himself of presbyopia.

1912 Embarked upon four years of experimental study on the eyes of various animals at the Physiological Laboratory of College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University. (Also on eyes of fishes, New York Aquarium).

1915 Published "Cure of Imperfect Sight by Treatment without Glasses. Or the Radical cure of Refractive Error by Central Fixation".

1918 Publication of correspondence course, Strengthening the Eyes, by Bernarr Macfadden and Dr. W. H. Bates (Physical Culture Publishing Co.) (Later, Bates' name removed.)

1918 Won prize for running at age 58.

1918 Published "A Study of Images Reflected from the Cornea, Iris, Lens, and Sclera."

1919 First issue in July of monthly magazine edited by Bates, Better Eyesight.

1920 First edition of Perfect Sight Without Glasses (also known as The Cure of Imperfect Sight by Treatment without Glasses.

1922 Bates elected Vice-President of Allied Medical Associations of America.

1922 Left Harlem Clinic.

1924 Publication of Strengthening the Eyes in book form (ghosted by Hereward Carrington. (Source: M. Gardner, Fads and Fallacies.)

1925 First British Bates Method Clinic set up in London England.

1926 Publication of Stories From the Clinic, by Emily C. Lierman (Imprint of Bates' Central Fixation Publishing Co., with forward by WHB, and compiled from Lierman's contributions to Better Eyesight.)

1927 Death of (third) wife (nee Margaret Crawford, one time wife of Charles McComb): she left two children, William (Crawford) Bates and Milo Bates) (see Cyclopedia article).

1927 In November issue of Better Eyesight, Bates gave an account of F. M. Alexander's methods.

1927 Approximate year in which author John Dos Passos took "a course of eye exercise" with Dr. Bates (he later told Fred Meyer that these possibly helped check a tendency towards progressive myopia. His impression was that Bates was an "honest fanatic").

1924 Bates married on August 14th, Emily C. Lierman (who became Emily Ackerman Bates).

1928 On May 28, Federal Trace Commission issued complaint against Bates for advertising "falsely and misleading."

1929 Publication of Harry Benjamin's Better Eyesight without Glasses - continuously in print ever since.

1930 Last issue of Better Eyesight in June. List of teachers recently trained included the name of Mrs. Corbett of Los Angeles.

1931 On January 13, Federal Trade Commission complaint against Bates dismissed.

1931 Bates died at his residence (210 Madison Avenue) on July 10th having been seriously ill for more than a year.

1931-3 Bates' will administered by William Crawford Bates. Besides Emily Bates, William Crawford and Milo Bates, mention is also made of three grandchildren: William Crawford Bates, Jr., Peggy Ann McCoumb, Charles E. Crawford. Furniture which had been in store at (rented) offices at 18 East 48 Street, sold. No takers for remaining copies of PSWG.