Anxious One.—We think that you will find the cause of your symptoms in your spectacles. Did you have your eyes examined by a medical man, or did you go to an oculist and choose the pair that suited you best? We guess that you did the latter, and if our surmise is correct, your symptoms are very easily accounted for. Your eyes evidently have different refractive powers, that is, they need different glasses. The spectacles kept by oculists, or, rather, opticians, have both glasses of equal power, so that you could not get a pair of spectacles to suit your own case unless you had them made for you. You say your "other eye is defective." By this do you mean that you cannot use that eye for working, or that it squints? In either case it would be practically useless, so that your "bad eye" has to do all the work, and is consequently overworked, becomes sore, and gives you headaches. If it is not exactly suited by the lens in front of it, it is quite capable of incapacitating you altogether. Go to an ophthalmic surgeon and get a prescription for glasses for each eye separately. Take the card to the best optician you know and have the glasses made for you. We know that this will be rather expensive, but it is necessary if you wish to keep your sight.
An Old Friend of the "G.O.P."—We advise you not to use lemons for your hair, for though we do not think that they would do much harm, they are not likely to do any good. Try a hairwash of rosemary or quinine, or use a pomade containing cantharides.
Slight Deafness (An answer to "Jessie," "Deffee," "An Unhappy One," "Minnie Steward," and "Queen").—We are much pleased that our answer to "A Constant Reader" has been the cause of so many of our readers laying their troubles before us. As the five correspondents whom we are now answering have understood the absolute necessity of supplying us with information about their ills before we can give them a definite answer, and as all have answered the thirteen points which it is necessary to know before discussing the treatment of deafness, we will be able to give them much more lucid replies than is possible in most cases of the kind when correspondents merely ask us for "a cure for deafness."
"Deffee" has given us "a poser," for her answers to our thirteen queries seem rather to indicate a combination of unhealthy conditions rather than a single complaint. There is a great amount of information in her report which suggests wax. As the treatment for this condition is perfectly simple, she should try this first. A person who "scarcely knows what a sore throat means" is hardly likely to have suffered much from it. There are certain passages in her letter which strongly suggest that the chief cause of her deafness is hardening and stiffening of the drums of her ears from catarrh of the nose and eustachian tube. We advise her to get an "atomiser" and thoroughly spray her nose and throat with a solution of menthol in paraleine (1 in 8) three times a day. We hardly like to give an opinion as to the ultimate result.
"An Unhappy One" would do best to go to a hospital as she suggests. The cause of her deafness is probably catarrh.
"Queen."—Your letter was most interesting, but we fear that we can hold out no hope of your ever recovering your hearing. You are to be congratulated upon having recovered at all from so frightful an accident, which is nearly always fatal. Your left auditory nerve was torn through by the fracture of your skull. It is an exceedingly soft nerve, and we have never heard of its recovery from division. This is probably because the nerve is always more or less lacerated as well as torn across.
MISCELLANEOUS.
Trela.—Miniature portrait painting on ivory has become very fashionable of late, and there are always many in the exhibition at the Royal Academy each year. Moist water-colours are used for the painting, sable brushes, and a piece of ivory. The work is very fine, and requires strong and good sight. We think you would require lessons and some study before you made it valuable to you. Meanwhile you should try to see a collection. Richard Cosway was a great miniature painter. You do not say where you write from, so we cannot tell you where to go. If near it, go to the South Kensington Museum.
Margherita.—The population of the world is given in Meyer's Konversations Lexikon at, Christians, 448,000,000; non-Christians, 1,004,000,000.
Green-Eyed Cat.—For "madeira cake" take eight ounces of flour, five ounces of castor sugar, five ounces of butter, four eggs, citron as desired, and grated lemon-peel. Blend the butter and sugar together, add the grated lemon-peel, stir in the eggs one at a time, and sift in the flour by degrees. Then pour the mixture into a buttered cake-tin, placing the pieces of citron on the top, and bake during forty minutes in a moderately hot oven.