Morning journal and courier., 1884-02-18
Curing Damaged Eyes.
A~-@ A~&SAAA05O O0 ny SOSs
Mysterious Applications that O COnAdeA
EnRIfshmRn Uses.


Curing Damaged Eyes.
Mysterious AppIfcatlons that o Confident
t EngIfshmRn Uses.
n 'tBlack eyes cured in few hours, without
!, painting or lseching." The claim, when It
s met the reporters eyes, looked simply pre-
. posterous. That an eye like an egg plant
i sheuld, even by leeching and painting, be
n made to look like any other eye in a normal
. condition, has long been known to be a deiu-
4 sion and snare. But by those means it
4 could at least be made less conspicuous, or,
: rather, the general aspect of its horrors could
be changed. But the wearer would know it
was there, all the same
sIt is true, however, that can, in from
: one and half to five hours restore to its
natural color the purpled, blacksned, bruised
Hssh about an injured eye; restore clearness
to the blood-shot eye ball; make almost inn
perceptible any ordinary cut, such as a seal
! ring would make, and take out the feeling of
painful stiffness, soreness, and puffed up-red-
ness about the eye" The speaker was trim,
} business-like Englishman of medium height
and middle age, found awaiting customers in
his operating room ST ann the only person
in America who does this business, and there
are very few In England who are acquainted
with the secret of 1t, but it was in Manchester,
Eng, that learned it, from an old fighting
men. You see, used to be in that business
| a bit myself, mostly as trainer for pugilists,
and pedestrians, and all sorts of athletes;
sometimes as second, on occasion. Here's
what take the color out with. Wait a mo-
ment until wash it off. have to keep it
| in kor ifc 70
dry it's no good" The article he exhibited
was a big, black, chunky root. When the
top was out off, it had dirty, yellowish-
white color. He scraped it with the end of a
caseknife blade, and it seemed to be about as
hard as turnip. 1t had smell of earth,
nothing more.
| tsCan taste it?''
'tYou can, but they say in England that it
ia poisonous when taken internally"
| 'tThey mas be right I won't try it."
| '"This root, !" the exhibitor went on. grows
in all sorts of shapes, sometimes rough like
| this, but sometimes smooth and round as a
| cabbage, and not infrequently one tuber will
| weigh as much as four pounds All use OF
| it have to import from England at consider
| able expense, for it does not grow here Oc
/ casionally you could find it in drug stores
| but always dry, and the of it unkno wn
''Well, how do you use it?"
''Simply scrape it and lay the scraped |
| mass on the bruised part 1t smarts little, |
| but not much-not at all severely. Here, try |
little of it on the back of your wrist and |
you will get the sensation
He put wad of the soft, COOL gIutinous |
stuff on the reporters wrist, and in very |
few minutes it began to cause slight smart
ing. not painful, and not increasing In in
tensity, even reddening the skin.
1T will not blister, and even when its
jules goes into the eyes, as it must to cure
bloodshot, it merely causes that little smart |
ing temporarily. After it takes the color
out, il there is any fever or inhamed appear |
aBcs on the skin, I use certain lamentations, |
either one of certain flowers or another of
buttermilk and certain mineral substance |
Should an eye be blackened and closed up
so that the patient is perfectly blind, then
have to administer sweat l strip the pa
tient to the waist, throw blankets over him,
covering the head, and as he sits STOPPING
put under his face some boiling stuff that
soon reduces the swelling. 1t may take three
or four repetitions of from eight to fifteen
minute swests to get the swelling down and
the eye open, if it is a very bad and long
neglected case; but there is no case SO bad
that it will not yield to that treatment. One
recent Sunday night had man come here
with one badly blaoked eye leading another
who was perfectly blind from having both
eyes banged and shut up. Cases sometimes
come from as far distant as Hartford, Albany, |
PHILADELPHIA and Trenton. They have been
left to swell and stiffen, SO that rule they
have to be sweated But they all come ont
right. If the skin has been cut cover the
injury with goldbeater's skin, whieh is a.
most imperceptible and heals better than
court plaster. When the job is done, if the
patient has 10 go right out in very air, put
glycerine on the softened and bleached skin
merely to close the pores and prevent taking
cold; but there is no danger of the color COM
ing back when I am through with job"
''Who are your principal customers?"
s'Ohi they are of all sorts, and come from
all over, men and women both. I guess
have treated more black eyes for women
than for men, often for respectable ladies
who had received this accidental disfgure |
ment. Ladies' skins, you may have observed, |
are tenderer than mems, and a bruise dis |
colors them more readily And there are SO
many ways in which eyes may be blacked
can of preserved meat falls from a shelf
on shopkeepers nose, and that fixes both
his eyes; a lady runs against hatf-opened
door in the dark and is lucky it she blacks
only one; man tries to chop stick of wood,
and it flies ur against his eye; lady is just
passing a door, when somebody suddenly
opens it against her eye; man gets hit in the
eye by SNOWFALL I've had three cases of
that this winter); lady stoops down in the
dark and bang IS her eye on a corner of the |
washstand; both ladies and gentlemen go
tumbling down stairs, and somehow black
their eyes a way that would surprise you
stAnd you believe all those expianaions?"
do T. OF course, 1 never contradict
them, but know just as well how an eye
was blackened when I it the person
who has it does. The abrasion made by a
fall on the stairs, the marked line of contu-
sion from door, the cut of seal ring-one
of these big knuckle duster rings that brutes
and loafers carry-ths plain bruise of blow
are all plain as print to me. But If folks de-
sire to give me romsnces shy should l con
tradict? Sometimes. ho@ever, they give 1t
away solidly man came in here one day |
uish 1odu ruh had had |
gan telling how she got it. when she inter-
rupted him. saying No; you did it, and |
there's use in your saying it was a fall
He had no more TO say. but he looked as If |
he would have liked to black her other eye II |
he dared"
What is your best season for cases?"
stBusiness is pretty good all the year
through, but is bsst about the holiday season. | ,
1 had a special importation of twenty pounds
of root for the recent holidays Then the
picnics and excursions, with the Incidental
beer, make the summer time good season
for me. But winter is best The week after
New Years. had all that could do. day and
night / don't know that keeping resolutions
to swear off made people any orosser and
fuller of fight than usual-I should hardly |
think it would-but know there were lots |
of black eyes in the community that week. |
One thing amused me a little. had two |
men here under curs. One lay there, on the
bed; the other there on the sofa A boy came
IN ana WHub0u ule EO go TO biSecRSE StTSSt 70 |
attend man, and directly messenger came
for me to go down to Bond street to cure
fourth man. As soon as 1 could get away a
went down and treated the Bleecker and
Bond street cases at the same time, going
from one to the other and back, again and
again, to watch the treatment. They were
two saloon keepers who had been fighting to
gather, and each one thought he was the only ;
one hurt. When both were cured and each
knew that he had bruised the other. both
were quite happy and contented. often
have as many as three under treatment here
at one time. No, do very little for pro |
fessional fighting men. They are not, as i
rule, good pay. I'm not so hard about
money as to refuse in certain cases to cure an i
eye for nothing, but where people can afford {
it intend that they shall pay. get from
90 to So ordinarily for curing black eye :
here, if it is net a very bad one, but some {
times as high as fifty for an awful case, or 1
where have to go to q considerable distance. |
To some extent nv charge depends, too, up !