“MOONBLINK” VICTIMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1189, 27 December 1913, Page 4

“MOONBLINK” VICTIMS.

Beware of sleeping in the moonlight if you wish to avoid “moonblink.” Moonlight and romance are, according to tradition, almost inseparable. But moonlight sometimes claims its own victims, and they are then said to be suffering from the unromantic affection known as “moonbliuk.” That is the name given to a temporary blindness said to be due, according to the Lancet, to sleeping in the moonlight of tropical climates. The writer adds that there is even quoted a death the cause ot which was officially staled to be exposure to moonlight. A London doctor asked for his. opinion said : “Though I have never heard of a person becoming insane or dying from exposure to the light of the moon, I do know that some persons become more excited and very romantic at the times when the moon is either new or full. It is a singular fact that in asylums lunatics have to be supplied with extra doses of medicine to soothe their nerves at these periods of the moon’s age.” Another doctor, however, held a different view: “It is just as safe to sleep under the moonlight,” he said, “as it is to sleep anywhere else. The whole thing I regard as mere superstition.”