At the age of 16, Huxley was stricken with an eye disease which left him in a state of near-blindness for many years thereafter. In 1939, in a state of exasperation, he began to practise the method of visual re-education evolved by Dr W.H. Bates. Within two months he was reading without spectacles and without eyestrain. An enthusiastic convert, Huxley wrote this book, a homage to the Bates method and a serious challenge to the orthodox medical profession.