The concept that visual defects could be cured by throwing away one’s glasses and following a prescribed regimen of eye exercises. The idea was one of the most persuasive pieces of medical pseudoscience of the early part of the 20th century, and the treatment was followed by many thousands of people in Europe and the United States.
The first exponent of this theory was Dr. William Horatio Bates (1860-1931), a New York ophthalmologist who in 1920 published a book called Cure of Imperfect Eyesight by Treatment without Glasses.