BLIND FROM BIRTH

Hokitika Guardian, 18 May 1931, Page 8

BLIND FROM BIRTH

YOUNG MAN CAN SEE.

SAN FRANCISCO, April 9.

Eyes which never saw brought new sensations and revelations beyond expression to Earl Musselman, 22, whose vision has been made by the skill of a surgeon’s knife in Philadelphia. He was, born blind, and learned to know people and objects by sound and touch, but now he can see.

Musselman was born without pupils in his eyes. Six weeks ago Dr. G. H. Moore, a specialist on the staff of the Graduate Hospital in Philadelphia, performed an operation and a few days ago the bandages were removed. Musselman beheld a new world, a world of colour sensations in which years o, stored up imagination became real, and many impressions were found to be wrong. “I was completely fooled,” lie said. “T thought I knew ‘what it was Ml about,’ as the saying goes, but I was wrong. Besides all the tilings which 1 had wrong impressions of, there are so many things of which 1 had ho impression at all. The way bricks are set in a building; the way one colour is di ! ferent from another, and one shade blends into another, the way tramcar track’s run straight beside each other, and the way they shine, the way a. horse and the motor vehicle movoit’s all wonderful. Imagination can in no way convey an idea of colour, id the vivid beauty of flowers. I bad tried to fix,colours in my mind from descriptions bv teachers and friends who could see, but my conception of them was drab and dull compared with the wonderful colours I can sec now.” Now Learning to Read.

Musselman is not able to associate the various colour "sensations witi names. That is one of the things b< will have to learn. “I’m trying to read fitli my eyes already,” lie said. Of course, f can’t read ordinary type, but the doctors say I’ll be able to soon. The alphabet is simple, and when my sight is a little better reading will be no trick at all.” He has been able m read with bis lingers for years, and physicians expressed the belief that lie will learn as much in three months about reading and writing as a cliii starting to school would learn in si.-: years. When Musselman looked at himself in a miiror he jokingly remarked that he “looked something like he thought a monkey looked.” But lie admitted that everybody, including himself, "’ a -s better looking than his “mind picture” of them. Though an ordinary room contains more worders for him that Yellowstone Park lias for those who had their sight, that national park is one of the things in particular Musselman wants to see. He said lie would like to be a travelling salesman, so that be. would see “lots’, of the country.” The Surgeon Explains.

’The removal of- a mass of substance behind the cornea of bis left eye brought sight to Earl Musselman, Dr. Moore explained. “The great tiling about it all,” he said, “is that a man born blind can now see. I learned by flashing a light close to his eyes that the optic nerve was not atrophied. Only the left eye showed a chance ■>] giving sight; the right eye was completely gone. I gave him gas in order that the eye might be absolutely still, and then made an incision at the bottom of the eye. I went through the cornea, where I found a mass of substance, connective tissue, which lay behind the cornea. This was not growing and apparently had been there since birth. I pulled out the mass, about the /size of a pea.

“There was no pupil. It was what we call ‘obliterated’—so I made one at the. bottom of the iris, rather than in the centre, where the pupil normally is. This may cause him trouble in focusing, but,can be corrected with glasses. By removal of this mass and the making of the pupil, the light could get through the lens lo the retina, and, since the optic nerve was not atrophied, he can now see.”

Mr D. W. Laubach described the jov and bewilderment of his nephew on his “awakening.” “He seemed amazed when he first saw the hospital and its attaches,” Mr Laubach said. “Everything was strange to him. He wanted to see everything at once. The colouring of flowers, particularly, fascinated him.”