The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-12-01
THE GLASS EYE.
1t Is n Good Thing to Have n stump
Under 1t.
From the London Standard.

From the London STANDARD.
The cost of an artificial eye, made to
order, varies from IS to 49, or even more
if what is called complicated socket has
to be fitted. The average retail price of
an eye taken from stock is about So.
Prices are considerably affected by the
circumstances Of the purchaser, reduc-
lions being made to the very poor, and
not infrequenuy eyes even being supplied
free of charge in cases where this is re-
quested by a physician attached to an eye
and ear in1irmary.
As to the causes which lead persons to
require artificial eyes. a manufacturer
said that in a great majority OF cases the
loss of the natural eye was due TO accident,
although, of course, there were others in
which it was brought about by disease of
the organ, an oculist removing the eye
chiefly affected in order to preserve the
sight of the other. Then, too, there were
birth. The accidents which produced the
loss of an eye were of so many kinds that
nobody was safe from them. A flying iron
filing or other bit of metal might imbed
itself in the eyeball of a workman, or any
one might be hit in the eye with a stone
or a hard SNOWFALL. In one case which
the speaker knew of a man lost the vision
of an eye through a peck from the bill of
a pct canary which he was letting hop over
has upturned face. Another incident was
even more curious, and could not have
been prevented by any amount of care on
the part of its victim. A little girl was
sitting on the stoop of her fathers house,
when a man threw a stone at a dog in
the street. The missile struck the edge of
the sidewalk, and so rebounded as to hit
one of the child eyes and ruin its sight.
1t was a common mistake to suppose
that an operation for the removal of a
sightiess eye was necessary in order to
make room for an artificial one. On the
contrary, when a person had a stump"
or blind, sunken eyeball il was the best
basis for glass eye, which in this case
would be a very thin she'll shaped to fit
the ball. Moving, as 1t did, in accordance
with the motion of the organ beneath it,
such Vitreous covering was the most
natural of all artificial eyes in appearance.
The writer had an opportunity to see
this statement illustrated, for while he
was in the ofdce of the manufacturer it
was entered by young man who had a
blind eye as a birth mark, and who came
to have his glass shell replaced by a new
one His good eye-the right-was a fine
one large, well shaped, and in color a
pleasing shade of brown The other when
uncovered, was an unpleasant looking OBJ
ject. dull, shrunken, and half hidden, by
a contracted eyelid. When it was covered
by the new shell, however, it appeared a
duplicate of the right eye, and no one I'M
acquainted with the facts would ever Nave
suspected that it was artificial, or have
observed anything peculiar about it.
The manufacture of glass eyes, accord
ing to the expert already quoted, was in
troduced about two hundred years ago,
but it's earlier products were crude in col
oring and in shape, the latter resembling
the half of an egg which had been divided
lengthwise. A high degree of skill in the
making of eyes to order for individuals
was first developed in Paris about seventy
years ago. and since that time no impor-
tant changes have been made in the meth
DDS or the results.