The Bates eye method is an alternative therapy that purports to "cure" defective #eyesight and diseases of the #eye by means of specific exercises. It is based on the work and theories of William Horatio Bates, a medical doctor and eye specialist practicing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Although rejected and later soundly debunked by his peers, Bates's method was readily adopted into the alternative medicine and health freedom scenes, where it became interwoven with nutritional and other pseudoscience in the hands of early "health fad" figureheads such as Bernarr Macfadden and Gayelord Hauser.
In my teens, I heard vaguely about "eye exercises" and (as a very myopic kid) wanted to try them. I found a Bates book in my local library, but even as a junior high student, I knew that the anatomy of the human eye didn't line up with Bates's description. Turned out, he was working from fish eyes (which have crystalline, inflexible lenses).
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