Predicting refractive astigmatism: a suggested simplification of Javal's rule

In the period of almost 100 years since Javal proposed an empirically determined rule for the prediction of refractive astigmatism on the basis of corneal astigmatism, many authors have made suggestions for the modification of "Javal's Rule." These modifications, rather than being based on clinical data, have been based on concepts of mechanisms that can contribute to refractive astigmatism, but in most cases the modifications do nothing more than complicate the process of predicting refractive astigmatism, with the result that only Javal's original rule is widely used. In this paper, keratometric and refractive data for three groups of subjects are used to demonstrate that a simplified version of Javal's rule is more effective in predicting refractive astigmatism than is Javal's rule itself.