At present, myopic patients in China are very common. Data show that by the end of 2020, there are as many as 600 million myopia patients in China, accounting for nearly 50% of the total population. In 2021, the prevalence of myopia in children and adolescents in China has exceeded 60%. Myopia has become a major factor affecting people's quality of life, which has a lot to do with the excessive use of electronic devices and poor eye habits of Chinese people.
But in ancient times, there were no electronic products, at best, it was to light the lamp and boil the oil to read and write, or to borrow the moonlight and snow fluorescent light, the head was hanging beams, the cone thorn strands, smelling the chicken dancing, and reading hard. However, myopia among the ancients is not uncommon, and some well-known literati are also short-sighted.
Bai Juyi, the great poet of the Tang Dynasty, was an out-and-out myopic eye, which can be seen in several of his poems. In the poem "Two Pieces of Eye Disease", Bai Juyi counted the symptoms of myopia:
A thousand pieces of snow scattered in the air, and a heavy veil was covered with a cage.
Even if the sun is shining like looking at the fog, it is not spring that also sees flowers.
Viewing the flowers and looking at the snow, hazy, like a fog view, vividly expresses the situation that the nearsighted eye sees things blurred. He also wrote the poem "Sick Eyes", which describes in more detail the pain of myopia looking at writing words:
Dizziness multiplies by aging, only increased is not a mishap.
Hua Fa's eyes are full of strange feet, and Liu Sheng's elbow must also be rested.
Da Qiao Luo Qi looked at it to discern, and the small-character documents were worried when they saw it.
If you can't distinguish between black and white, you should have no regrets.
By the time I get older, myopia plus the flower eyes is more painful. Often dim and dim in front of the flowers, more and more powerful. The big East and the West can be seen clearly, and the small characters of the book are vague and indecipherable, and they are worried when they see it. From this, it can be seen that Bai Juyi belongs to the highly myopic eye.
The pain of myopia made Bai Juyi in a bad mood, and he said in a reply poem to a friend:
Spring comes with dark eyes and less mood, and the point is exhausted.
Only the Junshu won the medicine, and the opening was not read before the eyes were clear.
- "The Book of the Money-Giving People Asks about Eye Diseases"
The pain of myopia is comparable to Huang Lian, and when he receives a letter of condolence from a friend, his mood improves, as if he has a good medicine, and the letter is already bright before he reads it. In the poem "Dark Eyes", he expressed his regret that he did not know how to protect his eyes when he was young:
In the early years, he was tired of reading books and bitterness, and in his later years, he was sad and had many tears.
Eye damage does not know how to take itself, and the disease becomes a prescription for enlightenment.
At night, it seems that the lights will be extinguished, and the long suspicious mirror is not polished towards the darkness.
A thousand medicines cannot be cured, but we should close our eyes and learn the head.
When I was young, I didn't protect my eyes well, and when I was old, no medicine worked, so I had to give up my books, close my eyes and recuperate, learn from the old monk to settle down, and practice hard.
Ouyang Xiu, a politician and writer of the Northern Song Dynasty and known as one of the "Eight Great Masters of the Tang and Song Dynasties" by later generations, was also short-sighted according to research. It is not difficult to see the hint from one of his poems, "Reading":
I was born with a cold Confucianism, and the old man kept the scrolls.
Although the eyesight is tired, the mind is not tired.
He was originally a humble Confucian, and when he was young, he could not release the scroll. Now the eyesight is not good, but the interest of reading has not disappeared at all. In 1056 AD, Ouyang Xiuwei sent Liu Chang (Ziyuan Fu), who was about to go to Yangzhou, to send him off, and wrote a fresh and chic "Chaozhongcuo • Sending Liu Zhongyuan Fu out of Shou Weiyang", which quickly spread, the first sentence: "Pingshan Lanqiao leans on the clear sky, and the mountain color is in the middle." Although the artistic conception is beautiful, it has attracted questions from posterity: sunny weather, standing on the Pingshan Hall, the scenery on all sides can be seen, clear and clear, and will never be vague, why is there "no middle of the mountain"? The good deeds then came to a bold conclusion: Ouyang Xiu was short-sighted!
However, it can be corroborated from Ye Mengde's "Stone Forest Yan Language", the representative of the "Nandu Poet". It is recorded: "Ouyang Wenzhong was short-sighted, and it was often difficult to read, but it was only for people to read and listen to it. In the government for several years, every time the writing is written, it is also like ordinary people, and it is not different. Noble people really have their own faces. "Wen Zhong is Ouyang Xiu's nickname, he is an errand boy in the government, because of myopia, reading is particularly difficult. The method adopted by Ouyang Xiu was to let the servant read books and official documents to him, which did not affect reading and official duties. Ouyang Xiu's degree of myopia can be seen.
Wang Anshi, a famous minister of the Northern Song Dynasty, who was also one of the eight masters of the Tang and Song dynasties, was also short-sighted according to research. Because of his short-sightedness, his life is quite inconvenient, and it is rumored that he only eats the dishes in front of him when eating, because he can't see clearly from too far away. Once, Emperor Renzong of Song summoned some ministers to the palace to enjoy the flowers and fishing, because it was not clear, Wang Anshi ate the bait as a snack. Wang Anshi's famous work "Plum Blossom" is well known to people today:
There were several plum branches in the corner of the wall, and Ling Han opened it alone.
Haruka is not snow, for there is dark incense to come.
Someone combined his symptoms of myopia and joked that he was because of myopia, and he did not see that it was a plum blossom, but smelled it! Speculation is speculation, ridicule is ridicule, we can also perceive the symptoms of Wang Anshi's myopia from one of his poems "Donggao":
Donggao gathered the new year, and Xi kun pan recalled last year.
The willow on the elbow is not cares, and the flower hair in front of the eyes is happy.
"Elbow willow" is an allusion to the change of disease; the flowers in front of the eyes indicate that the vision is blurred and faint. It can be seen from this that Wang Anshi's myopia is not shallow.
Of course, there are also assumptions. The Tang Dynasty literary scholar Han Yu wrote in the "Sacrifice of the Twelve Lang Texts":
I am not forty years old, and I look at the vastness.
And the hair is pale, and the teeth are shaken.
And in the recitation of the ancient "Early Spring", there is a sentence: "The light rain on the heavenly street is as moist as crisp, and the grass color is close but there is nothing." According to this, Han is more myopic and lacks sufficient evidence. There was also Sima Guang, a Northern Song Dynasty politician, historian, and writer who smashed a cylinder to save people when he was young, and later wrote the "Zizhi Tongjian", saying that he was a nearsighted eye, based on his own statement: "I have eye diseases and cannot be farsighted." "Eye disease is not necessarily myopia, there is no other evidence, not enough to believe." Some people also say that Su Shi is also short-sighted, based on the first few sentences of his "Reading Dr. Zhu's Poems at Night in Illness":
Sick eyes are chaotic lights, and fine books count dust and sand.
Junshi is like autumn dew, purifying me with flowers in the air.
In fact, Su Dongpo actually had "pink eye", he used hot water to cover his face to relieve symptoms, it sounded like a steam eye mask, and Dasu was used to treat pink eye. Su Shi was not only a writer, poet, calligrapher, painter, and gourmet, but also studied medicine and wrote "Su Xueshi Fang" and "Shengshan zi Fang" successively. To say that he is short-sighted, unfounded, subjectively conjectured.
In the Qing Dynasty, the two great celebrities in history were indeed veritable myopia. The scholar Ji Yun Ji Xiaolan, whom we are familiar with during the Qianlong period, was able to speak eloquently and read a wide range of books, in fact, the history books recorded that Ji Yun was "short-sighted", the so-called "appearance bed" was ugly; the so-called "short-sighted" was myopic eyes. The Qianlong Emperor was also short-sighted, and it is said that he was so short-sighted that even Ying Luo and the empress could not distinguish between him, but even though he was "confused" for a lifetime due to his vision, he still insisted on being himself.
Later, there were glasses, and glasses were quite common during the Qianlong period, but Qianlong always insisted on not wearing glasses. He also wrote a poem "Aria Glasses", which excludes the wearing of glasses, which is called:
Those who have glasses, prepare with help.
Either made of crystal or made of glass.
Glass clouds are harmful to the eye, but crystals are harmless.
Crystal is expensive, glass is easy to make.
What old age requires, Petcha is meticulous.
However, I was tired of it and have not tried it so far.
Wave a stroke of the note, the original can be the head of the fly word.
Or more progressive, with a refined meaning.
Laipi did Siming, Siming has covered.
Respectfully to those who come after me, I will think deeply about it.
The first few verses of the poem praise the benefits of wearing glasses, indicating that Qianlong is very clear about the effect of glasses, but why did he hate them so much that he insisted on not wearing them? The poem makes it very clear that, first, because of the material, he believes that Western glass glasses are damaged to the body, not as good as traditional crystal lenses; second, because after wearing, habits are formed, it is difficult to get rid of, and people are forced to do things. He believes that wearing glasses is to use other people's things, and to achieve "vision", is an unreal vision, is self-deception. From the fact that the Qianlong Emperor was short-sighted and refused to wear glasses, we can also see his closed-door and blindly xenophobic thinking.
-Author-
Liu Qirui, male, a native of Tancheng, Shandong, a veteran literature lover, published the essay collection "The Song of that year", "Nostalgia is a Curved Blue Moon" and the short story collection "Hedong Hexi".