Eye Man's Eye

Manhattan's No. 1 eye doctor is owlish John Martin Wheeler, 55. In his 30-year career Dr. Wheeler has removed some 1,000 bad eyes from some 1,000 good patients. He pops cataracts out of eyeballs, puts popeyes back where they belong, patches eyelids, makes eyelashes out of eyebrows. His most famed patient but by no means his best paying was King Prajadhipok of Siam (see p. 24) who gave him something less than $25,000 for squeezing a cataract out of the royal left eye. Last week Dr. Wheeler went to his own Eye Institute, had his assistant director remove his left eye because it had developed a tumor. In a month or so Dr. Wheeler will replace his missing eye with a fine glass eye with a perfectly matched grey iris.

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