DUTY AND RESPONSIBILITY OF TEARS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVI, Issue IV, 25 January 1896, Page 83

DUTY AND RESPONSIBILITY OF TEARS.

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 consist 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 to 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 effect of tears on the skin about the eyes, however, is intensely irritating and inflaming. They keep the epidermis in a dark, puffy condition, and in legends only do weeping women preserve the beauty of their great, white lids. The reason some women 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—the term is used in a medical sense—is less developed, and the 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. Why facial distortions shouid be the usual accompaniment to the sobbing of the gentler sex there seems no satisfactory solution. It may be that the nerves, which lead to the muscles as wires to marionettes, twitch and pull them in this fashion while they are at work emptying the tear glands of their contents. That the copious shedding of tears ‘ which break the ice bound fetters of the heart ’ is a healthy action, all physicians assert. In some cases it is even thought to avert insanity. Even here the reason is scientific, for it is a sign ot relaxation of the brain nerves from a tenseness that was congestion. 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. So long as this differentiating quality between man and his primeval ancestors persists, we may laugh at the theory of Darwin, so far as it reflects upon our family tree ; scorn all inuendos of ‘ missing links,’ and see our handkerchief as the sign and symbol of man's chieftainship in creation.