on Muscular Motion. 
25 
In the Apocrypha we find, in the book of Tobit*, a very 
circumstantial account of an opacity of the cornea successfully 
treated by stimulating applications. It is there stated as a mi- 
racle, but we have the authority of Jerome, a father of the 
church, who wrote in the fourth century, to say, “ the church 
“ reads the books of Tobit, &c. for examples of life and in- 
“ struction of manners, but doth not establish any doctrine by 
“ them/' We shall therefore consider the account which is 
given in extracts from the book of Tobit in that view. 
Tob. chap. vi. ver. 2. 
“ When Tobias went down to wash himself in the river 
tf Tigris, a fish leaped out of the river and would have devoured 
“ him. 
“ Ver. 4. The angel of the Lord told him to take out the 
“ gall, and put it up in safety. 
“ Ver. 6 . Tobias asked the angel what was the use of the 
“ gall. 
“ Ver. 8. As for the gall (said the angel) it is good to anoint 
“ a man who hath whiteness in his eyes, and he shall be 
“ healed.” 
Chap. xi. ver. 11. 
“ Tobias took hold of his father, and strake of the gall in 
“ his father’s eyes, saying, be of good hope, my father. 
“ Ver. 12. And when his eyes began to smart he rubbed 
“ them. 
“ Ver. 13. And the whiteness pilled away from the corners 
* Tobit was of the tribe of Naphtali, in the city of Thisbe, in Upper Galilee ; 
he was carried captive to Nineveh, after the extinction of the kingdom of Israel, by 
Enemassar, or Salmanessar, about the year of the world 3283. 
Gray’s Key to the Old Testament and Apocrypha, page 554. 
E 
MDCCXCVII. 
