CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE

THE CONSTRUCTION AND CARE OF THE EYE.

HE eye is, metaphorically as well as otherwise, the most abused organ in the world. In the old nautical novel, which presumably portrays life as it was at sea a hundred years or so ago, the old salt always affectionately shivered his messmate's timbers and damned his eyes; nor, as to the eyes, has the practice altogether ceased to the present day on both land and sea. So far as we are aware, no language but English is so reckless in the matter, and, as for the actual precautionary care bestowed upon the eye, different peoples, nations, and individuals are pretty much alike in incautiously squandering the treasure of its sight.

The time could not be more opportune than now to say a warning word about the usage to which the eye is subjected at present in this country. We live in the land of the practical plumber, as if a man could be a plumber at all unless he were practical. We live in the land of the undertaker, willing to undertake anything, whether or not it be within the sphere of his knowledge on the subject. The land swarms with opticians practicing as oculists, and of journeymen-workmen and street-fakirs practicing as both. The public is being exploited in the interest. of the sale of eye-glasses, while reputable and skillful oculists, than whom there are none better in the world than here, lose the practice whose possession it would be much more to the advantage of the public to have, than theirs to secure. Sensational advertisements flaunt in the public prints with diagrams for self-testing of the eye, to which attention is directed by some such legend as, "Are you astigmatic? If so, go to Tom, Dick, or Harry [as the case may be], and be fitted with glasses."

First of all, the public does not know that there are regular astigmatism and irregular astigmatism; and when we say that there is regular astigmatism, we say in effect that the best natural eye is astigmatic. The best natural eye is, we repeat, regularly astigmatic; the condition is consequent upon an organic defect of the eye, and, therefore, to tell the public generally that persons had better beware lest they be astigmatic gives them pretty much the same kind of mental disturbance as that experienced by the very little boy when told by a slightly bigger companion that he has a bone in his leg.

The major axis of the eye subtends a flatter arc (the horizontal curve of the eye) than the arc subtended by the minor axis (the vertical curve of the eye). Hence, when we focus a vertical line with the sight, a similar line horizontally placed with reference to it is somewhat out of focus, and vice versâ. Hence, also, when we look at parallel vertical lines, they seem farther apart than do the same lines when placed horizontally. It follows from this fact that the same lines, turned slowly around in front of us, will present all apparent gradations of distance apart, between their apparent distance apart when held vertically and their apparent distance apart when held hori zontally.

If the law should protect the public, as it is now beginning to do, from the tampering with certain medical matters of men not medically educated, it would also seem that the quackery of treating the eye by any one but trained oculists should be legally prevented. A whole population of midgets has lately sprung up, looking like little goggle-eyed sea-monsters, who, from the very fact of their enormous numbers, prove the impossibility of their having all been under the care of trained oculists, and that the advertising nets have not been cast in vain into the vasty deep of human credulity.

Enough for the present on this branch of our topic has been

said. For the reasons assigned, our advice to you is (if you think that you have anything the matter with your eyes, or even suspect that you may possibly, without actually knowing it, have something, either organic or functional, the matter with your eyes, or you wish to establish the fact, once for all, that at least constitutionally your eyes are normal) to go to an oculist, a real oculist, not a quack nor a mere optician. The cost will be as nothing compared with that which may be entailed by going to any one but an expert for advice as to so delicate an organ as

the eye.

Here, incidentally, we avail ourselves of the opportunity to say also a cautionary word as to an injurious practice which is limited to the members of one sex, which is not prevalent among them, and which is yet sufficiently followed to warrant a passing notice here. An oculist properly applies belladonna to the eye with his special object of dilating the pupil, but it does not follow that the same thing can be indulged in at pleasure without damaging the organ. Yet we are sometimes asked by young women if the application will do the eye any harm, the inference being obvious. We therefore say here, as we have had occasion several times to say orally, that such a practice is injurious. It stands to reason, even to common sense, because the dilatation is artificial. Nature does not kindly tolerate tampering with the mechanism of the body. Girls also sometimes ask us if arsenic tablets will do them harm, the inference again being obvious. Arsenic is a very useful drug in certain diseases, but not useful in health. The giving of drugs in diseases is a choice between evils, but in health there is nothing but good, the greatest of all earthly possessions. Foolish is the girl who seeks to make her eyes full-orbed with belladonna, or sparkle from sips of cologne, or give plumpness to her figure with arsenic. The only reproach that has ever been justly made against American beauty, that it does not last, she hastens to justify by making a laboratory of

herself. All these are meretricious aids that lead, no one who begins to use them can tell whither, but to certain loss in some form. This work has been written in vain if it has not shown that the only perennial source of youthfulness and beauty is the fountain of Hygeia, the goddess of health.

The eye is beautiful, when beautiful, in all colors. This may be acknowledged by every one, although every one has individual preference for a certain color of eye. Close observation will prove these statements true. The French have discovered that the generally much-despised green eye is, when fine, probably the handsomest eye in existence, because, as compared with any other equally fine, capable of a larger range of lustrous tints. and consequent range of expression. One difference among eyes that is related to great difference in beauty among them seems to have almost escaped attention. This is the color of the cornea, the so-called white of the eye. In the negro, white as is the general effect of the cornea as compared with the darkness of the skin of the face, near observation of it shows that it is of a yellowish cast. This is always an unsightly tint for the cornea. It is seen in the white race in the case of bilious persons, and markedly in cases of jaundice. But neither is the cornea handsome when it is very white. Then it has a glairy effect, like that of the white of an egg. The handsome cornea is tinged with the most delicate violet color. The eye depends, in sum, for its beauty, independent of its particular color, upon the just degree of globular effect, the curves of the veiling lids and lashes, the violet-tinged clearness of the cornea, and the size of the iris, popularly known as the pupil, with reference to the whole orb.

A very popular error about the eye is that it varies exceedingly in size among different races, and, indeed, among indi viduals of the same race. The fact is that the globe of the eye varies very little as to size among different races and individuals.

What leads to this mistake is the correct perception of the very different degree in different persons in which the ball of the eye appears as set in the socket; the extreme of insertion making it look as if, were it left to itself, it might fall inside of the socket, and the extreme protrusion of it, as if, under similar circumstances, it might fall outside. In the Mongolian race the eyes seem to be set slanting in the head, but that is an effect which is produced by a droop of the inner part of the upper eyelid, a characteristic of the race, and which, when occurring as an abnormality, is known among us by the medical term of epicanthis.

The following will afford a sufficiently accurate notion of the structure of the eye, omitting details that would only serve to embarrass the conception of the general reader.

Very nearly four-fifths of the globe of the eye at the rear is composed of a tough, whitish, opaque membrane, called the sclerotic membrane. This is continuous with a translucent membrane, which occupies almost one-fifth of the front of the eye, called the cornea. To say that the first membrane, the sclerotic, is sometimes called the opaque cornea shows the general relations between the two substances. So we have, to begin with in our conception, a globe formed, at the rear and sides, of an opaque membrane, with a small, circular, convex membrane let into its front as a window-pane, and for the same purpose as a window-pane is used-the admission of light. The physical apparatus constituted by this globe and its attachments is similar in principle and analogous in processes to the cameraobscura, with which photographs are taken.

In, and just back of, the centre of the pane of the corneal or transparent, horny substance is the iris, the richly-colored circle that constitutes the chief beauty of the eye, which circle, by means of its dilating and constricting muscles, automatically increases and diminishes in diameter the opening in its centre,