Blindness

“ Blindness and deafness are fattening afflictions for the medical guerillas. With a little reading, a few borrowed scientific phrases and illustrations wherewith to garnish his booklet, and an apt catchword for his advertising, your eye or ear specialist, or eye and ear specialist - for some of them combine the two - is ready for business. To get his patients he appeals to a deep-rooted and universal instinct, the piteous shrinking of the flesh and spirit from cold steel, so often the cruel necessity and the merciful hope of the afflicted. ”

“ Or a man whose ears have drunk in music bear deafness? Deafness and blindness of heart would be his portion in that part of life when most he needed ear and eye—deafness and blindness after having come to understand the melody of a happy home, and see the beauty of a child-encircled hearth. ”

“ There is the connubial blindness, ma’am, which perhaps you may have observed in the course of your own experience, and which is a kind of wilful and self-bandaging blindness. There is the blindness of party, ma’am, and public men, which is the blindness of a mad bull in the midst of a regiment of soldiers clothed in red. There is the blind confidence of youth, which is the blindness of young kittens, whose eyes have not yet opened on the world; and there is that physical blindness, ma’am, of which I am, contrairy to my own desire, a most illustrious example. ”

“ They are sorry, honestly sorry, and want so much to help, but to their minds blindness is the greatest of all afflictions, and loss of eyesight is accompanied by a corresponding loss of physical ability and mental vigor, unless the person so afflicted is unusually gifted, and, in that case, he is regarded as the marvel of the age. ”

“ But human beings are often called to still greater trials—to total loss of sight—in other words, to perfect blindness. This calamity results from many causes; for example, the cornea may become so opaque as to be incapable of transmitting rays of light into the interior chamber of the eye; or the crystalline lens, also, may become opaque (cataract;) disease of the iris, attended by closure of the pupil, will produce blindness, as will also paralysis, or loss of energy, in the retina or optic nerve, (Amaurosis or Gutta serena.) ”

“ As ordinarily used the word blindness signifies a degree of defective sight which unfits the patient for any occupation requiring the use of the eyes. Scientifically it means a state in which there is no perception of light. ”

“ Blindness is everywhere paramount, and in particular where clear-sightedness should reign. This reason makes me doubt the future, which I regard in the darkest colours and with many apprehensions of approaching disaster. ”

“ If, for some special reason, the oculist fears it would be unwise to tell the patient that blindness is imminent, he should at least urge him to conserve his remaining vision, and advise him to do as many things as possible by touch, and warn him of the consequences of eyestrain. But, whenever possible, it is kinder to prepare the patient for oncoming blindness, so that he may shape his life accordingly, and may be induced to learn to read raised type, and use a writing device, before the light is entirely gone. ”

“ There are also cases where one eye has gradually grown blind, and the patient lived for an indefinite time without knowing it, until, through the accidental closure of the healthy eye alone, the blindness of the other was brought to attention. ”

“ Blindness always comes of course from head-wounds, and head-wounds mean the disorganization of all the nervous centers. The Directrice left her work and went upstairs into the sick man's room and sat down by his bed. The great-shouldered, massively muscled fellow clutched at her like a scared child, and began in a rapid, hysteric whisper to tell her of the awful things he saw in his eternity of blackness. For he was not really blind, he told her, he saw, yes he saw, but only not what was really there ... ”

“ Except in extraordinarily rare cases blindness is curable.” In fact, unless the eyeball has been removed from the head, I should be unwilling to set any limits whatever to the possibility of relieving this greatest of human ills, for I have never seen a case or injury or disease of the eye which was sufficient to prevent improvement of vision. In all cases of blindness, whatever their cause, a mental strain has been demonstrated, and when this strain has been relieved perception of light has always been obtained. ”

“ We have flattered ourselves by inventing proverbs of comparison in matter of blindness,—“blind as a bat,” for instance. It would be safe to say that there cannot be found in the animal kingdom a bat, or any other creature, so blind in its own range of circumstance and connection, as the greater majority of human beings are in the bosoms of their families. Tempers strain and recover, hearts break and heal, strength falters, fails, and comes near to giving way altogether, every day, without being noted by the closest lookers-on. ”

“ Before discussing the prevention of blindness in adults, I wish to say a few words concerning the attitude of oculists toward patients suffering from eye diseases which, in all probability, will result in loss of vision. ”

“ Some years ago, I was happy in being able to demonstrate that a comprehensive range of diseased conditions and also blindness, the causes of which had been successively sought for in different parts of the eye, simply arose from too great a tension being exercised by the vitreous humor—a discovery which imparted so much the more pleasure, as a suitable remedy was likewise at hand. ”

“ It is a noteworthy fact in brain-physiology, that when an animal has been rendered blind by the destruction of the sight-center of one side, blindness disappears and sight gradually returns, since the remaining and normal sight-center of the opposite side assumes the functions of its neighbor. Complete blindness only ensues when both sight-centers are diseased. ”

“ In view of the widespread interest now manifested in the blind and their problems—an interest deepened by reports from the warring countries—I feel that a knowledge of the psychology of blindness should prove of great help to those wishing to take part in the re-education of the war-blinded soldiers. ”

“ Some knowledge of nervous diseases is also essential, and it is often necessary to exercise the greatest care and patience in giving the first few lessons, as an unwise word, or a failure to understand conditions, may lead to untold misery. This is especially true in cases of sudden blindness, as the pupil is often afraid to move about his own room, confused by the altered conditions, and bewildered by a multitude of sounds hitherto unnoticed. ”

“ We have, then, the senses of hearing, touch and smell, each playing its part in the development of the blind child, and each playing it so well that the lack of eyesight is not keenly felt in early childhood. Not until it is old enough to understand the thoughtless remarks of well-meaning people, to catch the pitying tone, to feel the compassionate touch, does it realize that this lack of eyesight is to prove an almost insurmountable barrier to its future success. ”

“ But blindness is something so independent of the mental life, so entirely corporeal, that the idea of its removal at all, still less of its sudden removal by means of a mental operation, is not to be entertained. ”

“ The age that marks off those to whom total blindness carries with it the loss of dream-vision from those whose dream-vision continues, is thus the age at which the sight-centre has reached a sufficient stage of development to enable it to maintain its full function, when partially or totally deprived of retinal stimulation. ”

“ It is a fact that the eye may be perfect, and the nerve connecting it with the brain may be in good working order, and yet no impression may be received by the brain. Injury to that area of the brain which receives the impression from the eye may cause total blindness ”

“ We are here to help in the work of health education, of eyesight protection; we are to call on society for aid in devising measures, and for means to carry them out, in order that effective results shall merge into perfect victory. We are here, too, I take it, to cure those who are dull-sighted in this regard, so that, with vision cleared, they shall join in the struggle for ocular conservation and make it possible to give sweetness of disposition and ever-present cheerfulness, not to the blind, the good God sees to that, but to those who shall be saved from blindness. ”

“ Blindness is a very general characteristic [Pg 129] of creatures which dwell in darkness. There are all stages between total blindness and weak eyes. Now, do these blind creatures live in darkness because they are blind, or have they become first weak-eyed and then blind because of the continuous disuse of their eyes? ”

“ The improvement in my vision since I have been under treatment has been indisputable. After two weeks the intangible suffering caused by light left me, and it has never returned. I can go out in the brightest sunlight without glasses of any kind, and, although my eyes feel weak and I squint a little, there is no real distress. I can look out of a window onto a sunny street, and when I turn back again into the room there is no blindness. ”

“ This demand will be lessened when the public learns to look upon blindness as a physical, not a mental handicap, and when, instead of compelling persons so handicapped to sit on the side lines holding their broken swords, it leads them forward, places a new sword in their hands, and brings them the glad tidings that they are needed on the firing line. ”

“ Seguin knew a man with hemi-blindness, from cortical injury, which had persisted unaltered for twenty-three years. 'Traumatic inhibition' cannot possibly account for this. The blindness must have been an ' Ausfallser- scheinung,' due to the loss of vision's essential organ. ”

“ The re-education of the blinded soldier is, after all, only the re-education of the blind adult, and he has been with us, lo, these many years! Adult blindness has increased alarmingly in the past half century, and the problem of providing for this unfortunate class has assumed proportions. ”

“ The blind and the colour-blind must remain exceptions for all time; and there are many gradations in colour-blindness, till we come to the normal class of seeing eyes; and passing them by, reach to those few men, gifted beyond all others with that fund of sensitive eye-nerve and mental power, which enables them to create new thoughts in colour. ”

“ Of twenty persons who became blind after their seventh year all have "dream-vision"—as I shall term the faculty of seeing in dreams. The period from the fifth to the seventh year is thus indicated as the critical one. Before this age the visual centre is undergoing its elementary education; its life is closely dependent upon the constant food-supply of sensations; and when these are cut off by blindness, it degenerates and decays. If blindness occurs between the fifth and the seventh years, the preservation of the visualizing power depends on the degree of development of the individual. ”

“ I have seen an Oxford [283] and also a London oculist, who have both examined the eye and pronounce the sudden seizure to be one of serous effusion upon the retina. It seems probable that the impairment of vision will be permanent, and so prevent all operative work where any delicacy is required. The blindness is so complete, that if I look about an inch below the electric light placed at a distance of a very few yards, I am not able to perceive any luminosity. Meanwhile, I have to wear the darkest of possible goggles, and generally to live the life of a blind man. ”

“ If you could see my records, and count the number of cases where blindness is given as the result of straining nearsighted eyes, you would realize with me that progressive myopia should be classed as one of the preventable eye diseases, and a vigorous campaign waged against the marriage of persons so affected. Nearsighted people should be especially careful to avoid eyestrain, and should not work by artificial light. ”

“ To be sure, many a so-called normal individual is afflicted with this same kind of blindness; here as elsewhere the neurotic simply exaggerates. Engrossed in his own mental conflicts and physical symptoms, he is likely to find his interest withdrawing more and more from other people and centering upon himself. ”

“ There is a budding morrow in midnight,
There is a triple sight in blindness keen; ”

“ This shows in an interesting way how numerous are the incoming paths which all end by running out of the brain through the channel of speech. The hand-path is open, though the eye-path be closed. When mental blindness is most complete, neither sight, touch, nor sound avails to steer the patient, and a sort of dementia which has been called asymbolia or apraxia is the result. ”

“ Colour-blindness always extends to the complementary colours. Those who are red blind are also green blind; those who are blind to blue have no consciousness of yellow. This law holds good for all mental phenomena; it is a fundamental condition of consciousness. ”

“ And you that sought for magic in your youth but desire it not in your age, know that there is a blindness of spirit which comes from age, more black than the blindness of eye, making a darkness about you across which nothing may be seen, or felt, or known, or in any way apprehended. ”

“ The blind are naturally introspective, and their power of concentration is greater than that of the average person, but I have not found them to be unusually religious. I do not think that blindness increases or decreases the religious tendency.
A third fallacy is that the blind can tell colors by feeling. This is absolutely impossible. I have heard of men who could tell the difference of color in horses, but, upon questioning them closely, I found that the texture of the hair varied in light and dark colored animals. ”