SIGHT RESTORED

Evening Star, Issue 22447, 18 September 1936, Page 12

SIGHT RESTORED

A DREAM THAT GAME TRUE SUCCESS OP OPERATION. Only the life-long blind can see the dream folk who walk about their world of darkness. Imagine, then, the joy of pretty, fairhaired, eighteen-year-old Miss Alice Margaret Vernall, of Williamstow, who, after 18 years, is about to look upon the real world as we know it. Miss Vernall has always believed that some day she would be able to see as other folk do. Yet, the restoration of her sight has come about by what she described as “an accident.” At the age of 14 Miss Vemail’s diseased left eye was removed. With her other eye she had always been able to distinguish btween light and darkness, but recently it began to hurt. A surgeon suggested an operation; the hundredth chance. From the eye or a London postman, whose complaint made it inevitable that he would lose it, they took the cornea and grafted it on to Miss Vernall’s eye at the Royal Eye Hospital. Now, after nine weeks, Miss Vernall can read very large letters, distinguish many colours, and soon she hopes to be able to see clearly enough to walk the streets alone. “ She can see splendidly now,’’ remarked a hospital official. Telling of her plans when she leaves hospital. Miss Vernall stated: “Most of all, 1 want to be freed from having to rely on other people. “1 want to be able to walk about unaided ” —and to show how far she had progressed, she made her way by herself to a seat in the hospital ward. “ I’d like to take up music—l’m keen on singing—and I hope that I may find work in an office.”-