ABNORMAL VISION.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 992, 6 December 1910, Page 6

ABNORMAL VISION.

CHILD SEES THINGS AT RIGHT ANGLES. A peculiar vision abnormality in a Chester schoolchild, ■ which caused tho patient to view everything at right angles to its truo position, is described by Dr. Meredith Young, the chief school medical officer to the Cheshire County Council, in his annual report. As the child's vision was suspected of being abnormal, some test type was put before it, and ho was asked to form the letters with his fingers. He promptly mado the proper number of strokes, but they were all in the. wrong direction. Ho.was then made to draw the letters, and drew tho large canital- E. On being told to draw a cat fie drew it standing on its tail instead of its legs, and similarly he drew a ship standing on- its bowsprit instead of its keel. "In theso eases." a well-known eye specialist explained, "tho defect is not in the eye itself, but in the transmission of the imago'seen from tho lining of the back of tho eye to the brain. Normally, the ■ imago of any object we see is thrown on the retina in an inverted position, the rays which pass through the upper portions of the lens of the cyo being deflected downwards, and those passing through tho lower portion being turned upwards. Thus if a lighted candle is held beforo the' eye, in tho image that falls on tho. retina the lighted end is downward. '■' "When an imago thus falls on the retina a set of 'nerve messages' are immediately sent un to .the brain telling us what the imago is. At the same time tho brain has learned onco moro to Invert the already inverted imago, so finally tho mind receives a picture of an object in tho true position of the object. "This'child, presumably, has somo abnormality in the nervous structures which carry images from the hack of the eye; to the recognising, part of tho mind. There is no euro for the condition. He will have to learn by experience that things which look horizontal to him are really vertical."