The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-12-24 00:00:00

SENSIBILITY OF THE EYE.—Public opinion, which on
medical subjects is generally erroneous, although for the
most part founded on professional authority, is, in no
instance, more injurious than in relation to the eye. It
pronounces it to be an organ of a very delicate nature,
exquisitely sensitive, requiring the greatest delicacy of
touch, and the utmost nicety of management ; which opi-
nion some oculists formerly found it convenient to sup-
port, and which the public may still continue to believe
without any great disadvantage; but students in surgery
must be taught otherwise. They must learn, that the eye
is not so very delicate; that it will suffer more compara-
tive violence, with less injury, than any other organ of
importance in the whole body ; that so far from being
exquisitely sensitive, it is, when exposed in a healthy
state, nearly the reverse, only becoming permanently so
on the occurrence of inflammation; and that the ablest
and most successful operators are not apparently, although
they are in reality, the most tender in their proceedings.
The opinion of the exquisite sensibility of the eye has
arisen from the pain which is felt on the admission of a
small piece of dirt, or a fly, between the eyelids ; but this
occurs from a wise and preservative provision of nature,
on account of the insensibility of the eye-ball itself. Let
the eyelid be raised, and the same piece of dust applied
to the surface of the eye, no pain, and scarcely a sensa-
tion, will be produced ; remove the piece of dirt, turn
out the lid, and, whilst it is retained everted, place the
piece of dirt upon it, no greater sensation will be induced
than is felt when it is applied to the eye-ball. The infe-
rence is, that both surfaces, when touched separately, are
nearly insensible to this species of irritation. But let the
same piece of dirt be put between the eyelid and the eye-
ball, and the sensation produced is exquisitely painful.
To give rise to this sensation, it is necessary that the two
surfaces should come in contact, and that the foreign body
be grasped between them.—Medical Times.
PREACHERS OF THE OLDEN TlME.—Almost every one
of Our most eminent preachers has been distinguished by
his manner. This was especially the case with those who
lived in the early dawn and growing fullness of the refor-
mation, That is, manner was most conspicuous when it
was most wanted. The crowds that flocked round Paul's
Cross, to listen to the invectives of Latimer or Jewell,
presented many features of intimate resemblance to the
masses who thronged the moveable pulpit of Whitfield, in
Moorfields. The same ignorance, the same brutality, the
same wonder, might have been traced in both. In pro-
ducing to these multitudes—often the rabble of license and
crime—the majestic truths of religion, it is obvious that
the mode of presentation would deeply influence the re-
ception. In this way Andrews, the learned and good,
was incomparable. Colet, the Dean of St. Paul's, in
1505, was equally gifted. The illustrious Sir Thomas
More thought it not beneath his dignity to praise even the
la,iguage of his face. Of Donne, also Dean of St. Paul's,
in the reign of James I, an exquisite sketch is given by
Walton, " a preacher in earnest, weeping sometimes for
his auditory, sometimes with them ; always preaching to
himself, like an angel from a cloud, but in none; carrying
some, as St. Paul was, to heaven in holy raptures, and en-
ticing others by a sacred art and courtship to amend their
lives : and all this with a most particular grace and an in-
expressible addition of loveliness.' One of his hearers ex-
pressed the picturesque exhortation of his manner most
forcibly, by saying, that the bystander might take notes.
Look at the temple when Hooker was the master, and
Travers the afternoon lecturer. It was within these mag-
nificent walls that the author of the " Polity" preached
some of the noblest theological prose in the English lan-
guage. Of his manner, we have the account of a contem-
porary. He spoke with a gra‘ezeal and an humble voice,
keeping his eyes always fixed on one place to prevent his
imagination from wandering, "insomuch," says Walton,
" that he seemed to study as he spake." His opponent.
Travers, on the contrary, possessed the gifts which Hooker
wanted ; and it was not, perhaps, altogether because they
had to adopt the particular phrase, Rome in the morning,
and Geneva in the evening, that the aisles of the Temple
Church were crowded when Travers ascended the pulpit ;
something was owing to that preference, felt insensibly by
all, of the glowing utterance of our thoughts and feelings,
before the calm and stately enumerations of argument or
of doctrine."—Fraser's Magazine.