Myopia - Nearsightedness and swordsmanship

[CalebChow]

In our modern age of computers, TV, and legally required decade-long education, nearsightedness is very common yet easily worked around with glasses/contacts/laser surgery.

Yet in the times before glasses, while they did not have TV and such, I'd imagine that plenty of nobles and knights had to read a fair amount.
My parents and grandparents all have had poor vision when they were my age from only reading books.

Wouldn't many knights/nobles in the old days have to deal with this issue? I'd imagine that swordsmanship was taught to even those that read a lot, and I'm wondering if there are any records of anything regarding nearsightedness and combat.

[Benjamin Smith]

Spectacles existed as early as the 14th c. BC. There is a portrait of [edited] Fransico Quevedo's [edited] a noted poet and fencer, in my Spanish Book shows him wearing specs. Thommaso de Modena painted a picture in 1352 showing someone wearing glasses. There is some literary evidence that they may have been first invented in the mid 1200s.

See here: http://www.teagleoptometry.com/history.htm

While they wouldn't have been common I think that some persons could have used glasses and learned swordplay. I do.

[s_taillebois]

Also it was a common practice for elites to have items read to them, rather than reading them.

We tend to live a bit longer so it may not have been quite as much the issue for them. And no doubt as a member of the armor plated aristocracy did age and became a bit creaky and poor sighted his henches would have kept people at a greater distance.

More likely what ended the sword career of many of these men was not poor vision but accessory problems related to the art or its use. For example shoulder and arm impingement problems seem to have afflicted some of the dead found at Towton. And today that condition does affect some in the martial arts both WMA and EMA.

Plus treatment of wounds likely caused other reductions in abilities as practices such as cauterizing and the muck they put onto wounds probably ensured a major loss of that limbs function. Simple fractures resultant from practice and etc they could probably handle without too much trouble. But compound fractures entailing marrow loss, and tearing of flesh probably meant amputation as the limb likely became gangrenous.

That's one of the reasons that the church tried to clamp down on the tournaments. They were losing potential crusaders to crippling and accidents resultant from the tournaments. (In addition to the brawls, towns being wrecked, and the other general chicanery associated with these events)

[Sal Bertucci]

I don't feel that it would affect fighting too much either. I have poor vision, but can still read other peoples movements. It'd be rough dodging an arrow though.

[Jonathan Newhall]

I have pretty poor vision, but it still functions nearly identical to how my vision appears when wearing glasses at ranges closer than about five feet away. Being unable to see the pores on somebody's face individually is not really an issue when swordfighting, however, so I've run into no problems so far without so much as wearing my glasses

[Curt Dunham]

Reading, computers, & TV don't cause nearsightedness. They just make it more noticable at an early age. Being quite nearsighted (I could see the big E on the eye chart but couldn't tell what it was without my glasses) I still could easily tell what my opponent was about to do at a typical combat distance of three to six feet. I could tell where his hands, body and sword were. They were just fuzzy, and I didn't want to get hit by a fuzzy sword anymore than a clear one.

I recently had cataract surgery in both eyes and now have perfect vision; but, alas, no improvement in sword fighting ability.

Curt Dunham

[CalebChow]

Hey Curt, haven't heard from you in a while! I hope you've been doing well.

Seems like the general consensus is that nearsightedness doesn't affect swordsmanship too badly. Archery is a different story altogether, I would guess.

My experience that led to me asking this issue stemmed from my days in sport foil fencing where the blades (especially old, strained ones) were extremely thin and all movements were on a very small scope. If I didn't wear my glasses, I couldn't see the opponent's blade AT ALL through the fencing mask, and the opponent's arm doesn't move as much in foil compared to longsword.

Distancing and measuring the attack opponent's timing were fine of course, but not being able to see the opponent's exact blade position cost me a good number of hits. I guess it's different for sport foil as opposed to longsword?