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"Some men came down to our relief,I thought this look'd well,

In order to conduct us safe
To Chelsea Hospital.

"The men conducted us with care,
And led us to the place;

The kindness I received there,
Time cannot well erase.

"Each being seated on a bed,

We thought that we were blest, And when we had refresh'd ourselves, We all retir'd to rest.

“Thus having gain'd refreshing sleep,
When call'd and bid to rise,
We scarcely knew where we were got,
Which filled us with surprise.

"O how desirable is rest,

Upon the sea or land!

Those who support a place like this
Our warmest thanks demand.

"Here I was us'd as well as man

Could ever wish to be,

Yea, all of us were treated with
Great hospitality.

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"We asked when we should go home,
They answered very soon,

And told us we should pass the board
The seventh day of June.

"This was the Monday following,
When many of the blind

Were led from Chelsea to the place,
By men who acted kind.

"The people stood and pitied us,
As very well they might;
Yea, some of the nobility

Were moved at the sight.

“Their kindness to us they made known,
Our case they did lament,

When money, with some handkerchiefs,
They did to us present.

"Thus being treated with respect,
This did relief afford;

We thank'd them kindly for the same,
Then went and pass'd the board.

"A pension they allowed us,

Which satisfied us well;

Then we were all conducted back
Into the hospital.

“The Duke of York, whose kindness then
I always shall revere,

He acted like a soldier's friend,

And with a parent's care!

"All our accounts were settled up,
And every man was paid,
And the expense for riding home,
Our Government defraid.

"In the road waggon I was book'd,
And one pound six was paid,
In order that I might with care,
Be to my home convey'd.

"About the hour of twelve o'clock,
For Cornwall I set out,

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THE OPHTHALMOSCOPE AND REMARKABLE INSTANCES OF THE RECOVERY OF SIGHT.

In that tiny looking-glass, the ophthalmoscope, the medical profession possess a precious agent in the cure of diseases of the eye. Before this invention enabled the surgeon to see into the whole of the interior of the eye, and thus to become visually acquainted with every feature of the disease, the methods of treatment of the subtle and manifold forms of eye-diseases were necessarily most imperfect. We will give an instance of the great benefit which the ophthalmoscope is capable of conferring. An aged woman took her grandchild to the London Ophthalmic Hospital, to be treated for some affection of the eyes. The child was attended to, and the woman about to depart with it, when she said she supposed the gentleman could not do anything for her eyes. She said that when about two years of age a fork had been_run into her left eye, that cataract had followed the injury, and she became blind in that eye. A country surgeon had operated on her for cataract, but the sight of the eye never returned. Mr. Wordsworth examined the eye by means of the ophthalmoscope, and discovered that a little membrane obscuring the retina had not been removed at the original operation, and that its presence had caused the blindness.

The old lady now submitted to have this obstruction removed, and she regained the precious sight of which she had been deprived for nearly seventy years. The restoration of vision was most opportune, for, with advancing years, a cataract was forming in the right eye, which would have totally deprived her of sight in a month or two.

In a letter to the 'Globe,' Dr. Kidd mentions the following instance of the restoration of sight in a young woman born blind. He says,

“I saw individually, and observed with interest, the following case, a short time ago, at the Eye Institution, Moorfields,—a case that would be invaluable to Berkeley, as bearing on the

part played by the senses in intellect. An interesting-looking young woman, twenty-two years of age, born stone-blind-partly educated in the family of a clergyman, all this time by finger alphabets, as we see blind men tracing the letters in one or two places in town-blind for twenty-two years-was restored to perfect vision in four days by a surgical operation, and to partial vision in two minutes. This young woman, in an instant, having been twenty-two years, and from her birth stone-blind of congenital cataract, began to see, as these deaf mutes in Paris begin to hear for the first time. The effect in the young woman was most curious, and something of this kind. She saw everything, but there was no idea whatever of perspective. She put her hand to the window to try to catch the trees on the other side of the street, then in Moorfields, she tried to touch the ceiling of a high ward; she was utterly ignorant, also, of common thingswhat such things as a bunch of keys were, of a silver watch, or a common cup and saucer; but when she shut her eyes and was allowed to touch them (the educated sense) she told them at once! She could almost distinguish the greasy feel of a silver half-crown from the cold, dry, harsh feel of a copper penny. Her joy was excessive when shown some mignonette and sweetpea that one of the surgeons had accidentally in his coat, for it seemed she knew all the plants in the clergyman's garden by the touch and smell! She looked at the bunch of keys, and with equal blankness at the flowers, then shut her eyes so as to recognize them; all this took up less than five minutes. But she failed to say, as well as I now remember the case, 'These are flowers.' But on my saying, when she opened her eyes again, 'Why these are flowers.' Oh! so they are,' she replied, shutting her eyes again quickly, and putting them to her nose. 'This is mignonette, etc.

THE HISTORY OF SPECTACLES.

That the ancients had no knowledge of glasses for assisting impaired sight, we may conclude from their universal silence on this matter; the only relief they had in such cases being certain collyria or eye-salves. We are also told that old men among the classical ancients read through a simple tube, which, by isolating objects, made vision more distinct. Ten centuries of obscurity intervene, until the Arabians begin to cultivate the learning of the Greeks, when several of their philosophers resumed the study of optics. The earliest of their works which has reached us is the celebrated treatise of Al Hassan, a distinguished mathematician, who died A.D. 1038. It was trans

lated from the Arabic into Latin by Risneir, and was published under the title of " Opticæ Thesaurus." In it he notices the magnifying power of segments of spheres of glass, a hint from which it is supposed by many that the invention of spectacles originated.

In the writings of the renowned and learned friar, Roger Bacon, the following passage occurs:-"A plano-convex glass is useful to old men, as well as to those who have weak eyes; for they may see the smallest letter sufficiently magnified." That spectacles are alluded to there can be no doubt; but that the idea originated with him-as maintained by several-is by no means so clear. However, it is quite certain that they were known and used about the time of his death, which occurred in the year 1292.

Alexander D'Spina, a native of Pisa, who died in 1313, having seen a pair of spectacles made by a contemporary, a Florentine nobleman named Salvino Armati, who was unwilling to communicate the secret of their construction, had a pair made for himself, and found them so useful that he cheerfully made the invention public. Dominic Maria Manni, an Italian writer of eminence, also attributes to Armati the credit of being the originator. A person, rejoicing in the name of Spoon, fixes the date of the invention between the years 1280 and 1311. Signor Redi, from whom Spoon quotes the preceding fact, states that he possessed a manuscript, written in 1299, in which the author says, "I found myself so pressed by age that I can neither read nor write without these glasses they call spectacles, lately invented, to the great advantage of poor old men when their sight grows weak."

The learned Du Cange, who died in 1688, carries the invention further back, assuring us that there is a manuscript in the French King's Library, which shows that spectacles were used in Constantinople in the year 1150; nevertheless, it is stated in the Italian Dictionary - Della Crusca that Friar Jordan Rivalta, of Pisa, told his hearers, in a sermon preached in 1305, that "it was not twenty years since the art of making spectacles was found out, and is, indeed, one of the best and most necessary inventions in the world." This would place the invention in 1285.

Bernard Gordon, a celebrated physician of Montpelier, in his "Lilium Medicinæ," published in 1305, recommends an eyesalve as" capable of making the patient read the smallest letters without spectacles;" and Muschenbroek informs us that it is inscribed on the tomb of Salvino Armati (to whom we have already referred), that he was "the inventor of spectacles." He died in 1317.

In legal parlance we have now" stated our case;" but the

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