"A white cataract!" she shrieked, covering her eyes with both her hands. "Oh! I am lost! I am undone! Nephew, dear nephew! can you not help me?"
"Hm!" I replied, with a look of anxious importance, making a few doctor's grimaces; "have you no sensations of paralysis in the tunica choroidaia?"
She knew what the tunica choroidaia was! and replied that she certainly had some sensations of the kind.
"Do you awake often at night?"
"I do indeed, every night."
"Hm! a bad symptom. Show me your tongue."
She produced it. "A very bad tongue indeed (here, at least, I spoke truth). If these symptoms should be accompanied by pains in the elbows (I knew the good lady was subject to this), I fear, my dear aunt, it may end in—marmaurosis!"
"O dear! O dear!—my elbows ache constantly; but what is the marmaurosis?"
"That is when the retina gets apoplexia, and the patient remains in total ablepsia."
She did not comprehend much of this, but what she did was quite enough for her.