Proclamation 4184—Save Your Vision Week, 1973

Like many precious possessions, eyesight is usually taken for granted until it is lost. Yet the preservation of vision—one of life's greatest blessings need not be left to chance. There are steps all of us can take to help keep our eyes healthy for a lifetime of useful service.

Simple safety precautions can substantially reduce the number of accidents which cause loss of vision. Potential sources of eye injury in the home, at work, and at school can be sought out and eliminated.

However, most blindness in the United States is the result not of injury, but of disease. Proper attention to hygiene, good nutrition, and, most important, regular professional eye examinations can minimize the risk of visual disability.

Glaucoma, one of the most common eye diseases, can be detected through a simple and painless test and, if detected early, can usually be arrested and controlled.

Many elderly Americans are unnecessarily blind because of cataracts. It is tragic that unwarranted fear of cataract surgery—successful in 95 percent of the cases—keeps many of our older citizens from regaining their sight.

For visual loss that can now neither be prevented nor cured, research such as that conducted by the Federal Government through the National Eye Institute offers new hope.

To encourage greater awareness of the importance of preserving sight, the Congress, by a joint resolution approved December 30, 1963 (77 Stat. 629), requested the President to proclaim the first week in March of each year as Save Your Vision Week.

Now, Therefore, I, Richard Nixon, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the week of March 4, 1973, as Save Your Vision Week. I invite the Governors of the States and appropriate local government officials to issue similar proclamations, and I call upon the Nation's mass communications media to join in bringing to the attention of all Americans the importance of preventive vision care.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-ninth day of January, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred ninety-seventh.

RICHARD NIXON