The management of the eye, ear, and throat / by Henry Power, George P. Field, John S. Bristowe.

  • Power, H. (Henry), 1829-1911.
Date:
[between 1890 and 1899?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The management of the eye, ear, and throat / by Henry Power, George P. Field, John S. Bristowe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    13/286 (page 9)
    THE EYE AND SIGHT. The sense of sight is so valuable, the variety, extent, and importance of the knowledge it affords is so much greater than that supplied by the other senses, that its loss, or even impairment, is always acutely felt. Young and old, rich and poor, are equally interested in its preservation, for its failure places the sufferer at the mercy of others, renders him more liable to accident, more open to deception, and, as a rule, unfits him for the discharge of the active duties of life, or, at least, enables him to perform them only at a great disadvantage to the rest of mankind. The rich man may indeed substitute the eyes, the hands, and the voice of others to assuage his affliction, to inform him of what is passing around him, and to protect him from injury; but he loses all those uncomm unicable charms, both of nature and of art, that his higher culture fits him to appreciate and enjoy, and that are yielded by form, colour, movement, and expression, by the play of light and shade, and the infinite variety of visual sensations. The poor man suffers still more acutely ; for, unless endowed with more than common energy, he feels that he has lost the means of subsistence, and that he has become a burden on his family, whilst he is at the same time destitute of those resources which are afforded by memory and reflection. The greatest of our poets supplies those touches that