The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-04-01
MAKING FALSE EYES
 \ UNIQUE TRADE
Great Skill Required to Make a
 Perfect Imitation
THE PROGRESS IN SURGERY
Although Science Has Made Marvellous , Strides, It Is Still Impossible to
 Remove Ball From the Socket
 Without Destroying Sight.

New York, March 3l-Seventy thou sand people in the United States are wearing glass eyes, and if the propor- ton of increase of injuries to the eye continue constant. in ten years there will be 100000 wearers of glass eyes in this country.
 A flying splinter in the air, speck of steel from some big building under con struction, a chip of stone from the stone cutters block may lodge in the eye Of the passerby and cause endless eompli- cations The perforaton of the outer covering of the eye by foreign bodies was one of the chief causes for taking the eye out, enucleation as it is called, until the development of X-ray surgery, which has saved the sight of many eyes by locating the foreign body in time for it's safe removal One of the commoner diseases following the Judgment of for eign body in the eye, and generally re- quirng enucleation is sympathetic op- thalmia, an affection of the unharmed eye. which is marked at first by dread or tle uSnl pam, anu dhddiig iAANA ing dimness of vision. Before the slght in both eyes is irretrievably lost, the ex- citing eye has to be removed. Other common diseases whose removal oIten depends upon enucleation are sarcoma, or malignant tumor and absolute glauco- ma, or hard eyeball."
 Every surgery, the most delicate and in tricate in the scope of medical science is making enormous progress toward Ia, nNsat fInG doing stunts" that our surgeon grand fathers would regard with amazement But one much advertised feat it has never accomplished, despite numberless announcements in the press to that effect and that is laying out the eyeballs on the cheek while they were variously oper- ated upon and replacing them with sue cess.
 Vivid Impression Related.
 A patient at the New York Post Graduate Medical School and Hospital recently underwent rather difficult op' eration on one eye, and to make his story more thrilling he described with much dramatic colorng how there were forty to fifty docthors sitting in rows and rows above me, like 1t was at the theayter, all thim docthors being students from ivery- where's in this country and from the ould counthry, an some haythens from Japan, an vans from England, an well they was there from all over the world just to learn of me what to do whin they wint back to their own patents-an whin the surgeon who was doin all the business, the Big Bug 1 mane, in the hospital why, people would pay him a thousand dollars to have him opyrate on their eyes, and l didnt have to pay i'm cint-- why. whn he tux out my eyes an they was hanging on my cheeks like you read aDout, all thim fellers thought 1t was so great that they came down to look at lllm close, an some of thim tuk a pictyure of me as l lay there with my eyes out; an if ye don't believe it, ye can ask to see wan of thim pictyures This thrilling experience found it's way into print. but it receives the mark of absolute discredit from the Big Bug himself, who forcibly remarked that All thees reports about removing the eyes and then replacing them are pure and utter nonsense. The eye cannot be lifted one eighth of an inch from its socket without destroying the sight forever
 So, when the eye comes out. 1t is out for all time, and only a glass eye can be substituted, and In this way the work of the hospital Is supplemented with the achievement of the optical prothetieian. He is the last resort of the eyeless one, and although surgery slaves him off as long as possible-an artificial pupil for instance, being made for patient the othe day in the Post-Graduate hospital whree before the eye would have had to be removed--his ministrations are sub ject for gratitude at last, for the glass eye of today movable in exact accord ance with the other eye. If certain mus cles in the socket are left intact, and so true to life that the keenest inspection often fails to detect 1t, is a boon to the afflicted, hiding the repugnance of de- formity. and thus removing an obstacle to his success in life.
 Only Three Houses Make Eyes.
 Only three houses in the United States make glass eyes, and they are located in New York city A large number of false orbs. however. of an inferior quality comes from Thuringia. in the heart of the romantic Black Forest of Germany. Here is the home of the industry, and from here come most of the glass eyes that the regular. optician keeps In stock. The American maker, on the other hand, is exporting his finer goods to every quarter of the earth, one house alone making ten thousand a year for export Of the other eye-making houses In the world there are five in Paris, three in London, and two in Birmingham, that here Is an industry which. it may be readily seen. is not overcroWded.
 Eye-making was practiced in the days of the oldest eiviliza tlons. There is au- thentic record of artificial eyes that were made in the reign of Ptolemy H. who grasped the sceptre in Egypt the fourth century before Christ. Eyes were at first made of metal. either copper or gold or silver, shaped into flat dicks and painted to initiate nature In the days of Am broise Pare, the celebrated French sur geon of the sixteenth century. painted representation of the whole eye. and eye lids was fastened in front of the orbit and held in place by a steel spring that fitted the upper circumference of the head Eyes have been made of wax and celluloid and vulcanite and horse, not long ago, presented an improved appear ance with an eye of horn. Eyes were also made of porcelain, when that came into use, and their effect was decidedly more lifelike
 Didn't Want Yellow Eye.
 A Haytian general once upon a time lost an eye in battle with the Spaniards and sent to Paris for another to replace it. He received an expensive and choice specimen from the Paris maker. but be- cause Ii contained a suggestion of vel