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The cases of lost sight attributed to age would probably be redistributed after a careful investigation. The degeneration of the crystalline lens, known as cataract, would include most of these instances.

Belladonna is given as the cause of blindness in two instances. Whether the drug was given in the form of atropia by a physician for its specific effect to dilate the pupil of the eye, or was taken for other purposes, or was used without medical advice, we are not informed.

Cataract is given as the cause of blindness in 238 instances. The constant progress making in ophthalmic science and art suggests the hope that this cause of lost sight pay appear in lessening numbers in the future. Indeed, it was not a rare note to find in a schedule as returned: "formerly blind from cataract, but sight is now partially restored by means of surgical operation."

Diphtheritic inflammation is charged with having caused two cases of blindness. Probably many more are included in the general class of unspecified inflammations.

Diseases of the brain and nervous system include a variety of causes, such, for example, as paralysis, fits, meningitis, hydrocephalus, disease of spine, headache.

Diseases of a constitutional and specific nature comprise cancer, scrofula, humors and syphilis.

Exposure expresses a variety of assigned causes, some of them of singular character. A considerable number of per living near the sea attribute their loss of sight to the brightness of the sunlight upon the water. The exposures of army life are blamed by many blind men as the cause of their infirmity.

The mischief done by scarlet fever is partially represented in the 55 cases which place it at the head of the list of fevers in producing blindness.

Injury of the head, blows, falls and the like, caused loss of sight in 15 instances.

Rheumatism produces its harmful effects on vision by attacking the sensitive muscle of the iris, and causing a serious and often irreparable inflammation.

In these days, small-pox does less harm to the eyesight than falls to the blame of either scarlet fever or measles.

Sunstroke is charged with 16 cases of blindness.

At the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind, the principal charity in the State for the reception and instruction of the blind, the number of occupants in May, 1875, was 118; the original causes of the loss of sight in these cases were given in 55 instances, as follows: --

The Deaf. The number of those who reported themselves as deaf (deaf-mutes excluded) is 7,241, -- forty-four in every 10,000 of the entire population, or one person deaf in every 228. Obviously this proportion does not express the exact amount of this disability in Massachusetts; on the one hand, it gives a ratio too large for the number of the totally deaf, while, on the other, it does not represent the whole number of those whose function of hearing is partially lost or indeed seriously impaired. This result arises from the difficulty which belongs to any attempt to discriminate degrees of disability by any standard short of an exact scientific measure.

The following table, giving the distribution of the numbers of the deaf in the several counties, shows that the people of Barnstable County are especially afflicted with this defect, while the inhabitants of Suffolk County are the least subject to it.

Persons reported as Deaf, their number in each County in 1875, and their proportion to the General Population.

Many of the contrasts apparent in the above table would disappear if the same census enumerator gathered the facts for the entire State, or if all persons, census enumerators included, were endowed with identical faculties of observation, and shaped their judgments by the same measure. It has been the experience of most governments that data of a specific nature, like those of the afflicted classes under consideration were much more fully returned from rural than from urban populations. This experience is exemplified in the next table, which gives an analysis of the numbers of the deaf reported in each city and in the State at large. By this it appears that only one of the cities, Salem, gives a proportion of deaf persons to population less than that of the State. If we seek an explanation of these contrasts outside of errors and omissions in the enumeration, the chief determining element of the disparity may be found in the greater proportion of young and healthy persons in the cities, or conversely, in the greater relative number of elderly persons in the country, persons more subject to the infirmities of advancing age.