The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1889-10-12

tor shows. he could not see what was going
on One day he discovered that a certain
concave emerald in his collection Of jewels
AIDED his vision materially, and from that
Time be always carried the emerald about
with him and, when he wanted to see any,
thing at distance, looked through it. He
regarded the stone as a talisman, and sup
posed that its properties wore N gical.n
Is IL true that every person needs spec
tacies at some period of lifeP'
decidedly, if the person lives to be forty
nVe years of age. At that age, or at any
rate before fifty is reached, the crystalline
lens, which is of the consistency of Jelly in
childhood, has gradually hardened to the
consistency of wax, so that the muscles
which change the focus of the eye for vari-
GUS distances, by altering the shape of the
lens, find it difficult to do their work You
VIII perceive that at er looking at an object
across the street, to examine your finger
attentlvely requires a distinct effort of
the eye. You have to exert the muscles
that control the shape of the lens
in order to make the focus right
for the near point. If the lens has got
hard, through advancing age, a continuous
effort of this sort, as in reading, bee 1nes
tiresome, and thus it is that the middle-aged
man or woman finds the first indication of
what is ignorantly termed failing sight in
the hlurring of the letters in the book or
that the ocular organ is Just as good as
ever, save for the fact that it needs little
help in the way of a glass lens to make the
focus right for reading, and thus save the
muscles work. The sight for distance,
under such circumstances, still remains as
good as ever, because the lens in its natural
focus and shape Is adapted to distant vision.
but THE MIDDLE-AGED PERSON,
as a rule, imagines that the blurring of the
letters signifies impaired sight. He or she is
aware that glasses will make reading easy
again, but hesitation is felt in adopting
them on account of the widespread saving
that, once taken up, spectacIes can never be
done without again. The truth at the
bottom of this lies in the fact that when
ones sight has once been restored by arti-
fetal means, one is not disposed to throw
the help away again. Not realizing this,
the middle-aged person keeps on straining
the eyes until they become somewhat
damaged, for want of artificial
aid in reading or sewing, and finally
the glasses are adopted-bought, in nine
cases out of ten, from the ignorant opti-
Clans, to cause more trouble, very likely,
later on. And all the distress might have
been saved by simply going to the oculist
when the annoyance first began to be felt
and procuring the proper glasses. This is
what every person at 45 years Of age
ought to do, for there is no one that arrives
at the age of fifty, at the utmost, who does
not need assistance for close vision"
'Is it true that near-sighted eyes improve
as they grow older?"
''Pah! That is another popular delusion.
Near-sightedness may grow worse with
age, bu. not better. Likewise, it is non
sense to suppose, as is so commonly asserted,
that the near-sighted eye is unusually
strong. How should the abnormal egg
shaped eye be stronger than the normal
spherical eye! The near-sighted eye is not
necessa lily weak, but it is a sick eye, in the
sense that it usually belongs to person
who is imperfect constitutionally. The re-
verse of near-sight is oversight, which is
occasioned by
FLATNEsS OF THE ORB OF VISION.
''It is the case of nearly all cases of weak
eyes, and of nine out of every ten cases of
'squint.' Any child afflicted with either of
these troubles should be taken at once to
the oculist and have glasses prescribed for
1t. Thousands of people go through life
without half the use OF their eyes, when the
whole trouble is simply due to a slight NAL
formation which proper convex glasses
would remedy at once. In the case of a
confirmed squint it may be necessary
to cut the shortened muscle of
the squirting eye, which removes the diff
Guilty d sets the organ straight again.
Let me add, while | think of it, that there
Is nothing against which the ignorant should
waters sold at apothecarIes' shops, which
almost invariably contain sugar of lead.
This chemical applied to a sore eye makes
an Opaque deposit on the corner, which
may 500 render the unfortunate purchaser
of Quack eye remedies permanently blind. u