SIGHT RESTORED.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5177, 12 September 1927, Page 3

SIGHT RESTORED.

MAN’S SIGHT RESTORED.

BLIND FROM BIRTH. A young man, blind from birth, scarcely able to walk, and a burden to himself and the family, suddenly lifted from darkness to light, gaining health, eyesight, a comfortable job, and is shortly to be married. This (says Smith’s; Weekly) is the mii acle wrought without any operation‘whatever by a Sydney physician on Charles C , a young New Zealander.

Previously leading eye specialists had assured him that hist case was hopeless; that his blindness was due to opaque deposits filling up the front of both eyes, deposits: which could not be removed without destroying the eyes themselves. This condition was a sequel to a condition at birth. The Infant developed ophthalmia, ulceration set i n in both eyes, and when medical treatment was, at last obtained it was too late. Dense scars formed in both eyes, blotting out the vision of the outside world. CRIPPLE AND UNTEACHABLE. A mere "glimmer of light filtered in round the edges of the opacities, so that eventually the patient could just distinguish light from shadow and night from day. Unable to see more than vague flitting shapes the unfortunate child could not learn to walk, and gre.w up to maturity a cripple, unable to hold himself erect and only capable of weakly staggering about. lij addition, the struggle to sense gleams of light with his. scarred eyes had led'first to convergent strabismus (in-looking squint), and then to nystagmus—a perpetual incontrollable fluttering eye movement attended by intense pain. Naturally, such a blind cripple was iinteachable at school; the boy was dismissed as< hopeless and sent to a blind institution, where he was taught basket-making. Most individuals in such a plight would have resigned themselves to the dull mechanical round of a blind man’s life. But the young New Zealander jvas made of different mettle. He determined to educate himself. With intense difficulty he found be could just glimpse the outline of letters when two and a half inches from his right eye. Slowly he taught himself, with this ope-eyed glimpse, to read; every effort to recognise the outlines being accompanied bv unspeakable pain. DETERMINATION WINS. To-day, owing to sheer determination, this self-taught youth possesses a far higher general education than the average clear-sighted man. But this widening of his, mental life merely aggravated the horror of his physical existence. He was fettered in blindness as a prison. Recently he came to Sydney and drifted from specialist to specialist, all of whom promised no hope of relief. Then, luckily for himself, on July 17 last year he- visited an optometrist,, who was in touch with the latest phases of ocular research. One of these is the effect of “oxidation rate of metabolism.” The body of eray human being is a machine working at a certain rate. This sp e ed is automatically set by several glands, ■ the chief accelerator being the thyroid. The business, so to speak, of the body is oxidation —the perpetual building up and breaking down (really slow burning) of protoplasm—the process calledj'life.” Every person has a “vital rate” of his own. The optometrist believed that if the patient’s normal oxidation rate could be speeded up the inoperable scars in the eye might be cleared — burnt up, as it were-, by an increased vital flame, from within. WHEN HE FOUND THE LIGHT. He sent the patient, with an outline of his case, to a Macquarie Street physician, who specialises in glandtherapy, and the blind man was put on a special gland treatment, with astounding results. In a few days he could see six inches distant instead of two and a half with his “good” eye, and the other eye (the left) .began to clear. The perpetual flicker of the eyel ’balls- now decreased. He was given a * fortnight with one eye bandaged, then a spell with the other eye. All this time the patient remained on gland treatment, and each eye was clearing rapidly. At last it became possible to fit him with glasses, correcting the imperfect sight left as the eyes cleared. This was on May 27 this year. It was an epoch-marking day for the “blind” man for it gave him a new vision of the world. For the first time in his life could actually see mountains, clouds, trees, buildings, and the faces and forms of his friends. The effect on the man was both astounding and pathetic. He learned for the first time how to hold himself erect and to walk correctly. It was as if windows wore suddenly opened in a dark room in which a cripple had been all his life a prisoner. The flutter of the eyes vanished on further gland treatment; the squint disappeared. It is now believed that both had been due to the lad’s terrific struggle to glimpse objects when teaching himself to read and write. T-hree weeks ago the “blind cripple" walked briskly down a city street and set his watch right by the G.P.O. clock. He has now a comfortable job. He is shortly to be married. His father, in- New Zealand, was unable to believe his son’s recovery until a photograph showing his altered appearance was sent him —the change wrought, as by a miracle, ih the blind, cross-eyed, stumbling wreck of a little over a year ago. Another * astounding result of the treatment was the effect on the patient’s general health. He was terribly emaciated when blind. On recovery of sight he put' on weight and is now s-o "comfortably padded” that he may qualify for city aldermanship. . This extraordinarj' case proves that medical science is only on th© thres- , hold of future wonders ; scientific exploitation of those mysterious chemif cal factories of the glands may become one- day the controlling fate or arbiter of human life.