Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 June 1901 — MERELY AN EYE WASH. [ARTICLE]

MERELY AN EYE WASH.

Ths Chemical View of Tear* Differ! From the Poetical View. "Tears have their functional duty to accomplish, like every other fluid of the body, and the lachrymal gland is not placed behind the eye simply to fill space or to give expression to emotion. The chemical properties of tears con» sist of phosphate of lime and soda, making them very salty, but never bitter. Their action on the eye is very beneficial, and here consists their prescribed duty of the body, washing thoroughly that sensitive organ, which allows no foreign fluid to do the same work. Nothing cleanses the eye like a good, salty shower bath, and medical art has followed nature’s law in this respect, advocating the invigorating solution for any distressed condition of the optics. Tears do not weaken the sight, but Improve it They act as a tonic on the muscular vision, keeping the eye soft and limpid, and it will be noticed that women in whose eyes sympathetic tears gather quickly have brighter, tenderer orbs than others. When the pupils are hard and cold, the world attributes it to one’s disposition, which is a mere figure of speech Implying the lack of balmy tears, that are to the cornea what salve is to the skin or nourishment to the blood. The reason Some weep more easily than others and all more readily than the sterner sex has not its difference in the strength of the tear gland, but in the possession of a more delicate nerve system. The nerve fibres about the glands vibrate more easily, causing a downpour from the watery sac. Men are not nearly so sensitive to emotion; their sympathetic nature—that term is used in a medical sense—is less developed, and tne eye gland is, therefore, protected from shocks. Consequently, a man should thank the formation of his nerve nature when he contemptuously scorns tears as a woman’s practice. Between man and monkey there is this essential difference of tears. An ape cannot weep, not so much because its emotional powers are undeveloped, as the fact that the lachrymal gland was omitted in his optical make-up. Dletlc and Hygienic Gazette.