FORMS OF HYPERMETROPIA
By C. H. BROWN, M. D. 1921

Hypermetropia may be classified as original and acquired.

In the acquired form the eye was primarily emmetropic, but on account of the lessening of its refraction, toward which all its senile changes tend, the focus for parallel rays falls behind the retina, and the refraction of the eye passes over from a condition of emmetropia to that of hypermetropia.

The changes that take place in the eye with the advance of years, more especially as to the loss of accommodation, and the rationale of the appearance of hypermetropia in old age, have been fully described in the chapter on presbyopia.

Original hypermetropia may be either congenital or developed at a very early age by an interruption in the growth of the eye, especially in its antero-posterior diameter.

The weight of authority seems to favor the opinion that the eyes of new-born babes are hypermetropic, which condition may soon develop into emmetropia, and then pass over into myopia ; and when once these changes have occurred by a lengthening of the axis of the eye-ball, they become permanent, and the eye cannot again return to its original hypermetropic condition.  

This would indicate a tendency for the eye-ball to elongate, and the natural inference would be that myopia is apt to increase, while hypermetropia seldom grows greater, but frequently diminishes.

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