OUR THREE WEEKS OF BLINDNESS

Shannon News, 12 March 1929, Page 4

OUR THREE WEEKS OF BLINDNESS

of Sight;

Each one of us. was once blmd. During the first three weeks of our baoy-, hood we could not see. Wo didn l take notice,” the nurse said; and the reason. was that we eould not use our eyes at all, So, at least, wo are assured by a writer in the AD^“ c J n Weekly’ (New York), summarising in formation recently given out by D. Park Lewis, vice-president of the Na tional. Society for the Prevention mt Blindness. When a new-born baby seems to be staring fixedly at As adoring nether or at its kindly .nurse,'what it sees is-nothing The new eyes, still unskilled m will bo their job through lifo, are xar more likely to be attracted by an open window into the sunlight or by a nearby, electric lamp than by anything human. , To quote from the article:— : * <‘Old-fashioned nurses used to say after a few days that the new baby, »was beginning to ‘take notice , > phrase which has the full approval of .niodem science. For about three weeks aftor birth, say's Dr. Lewis, a baby cannot really see anything clearly. “These three blind weeks are not altogether eye-blind. They are bramblind, too, for the brain has not yet. learned what eye messages mean. Messages that go to the brain centres from the ears need also to be and sorted. Touch-messages are, perhaps, understood a little better; for these are simpler. Perhaps the sensations that adults call taste and smell aie equally lacking. 'But the deficiency is more likely to be in the sorting and interpreting office in the , unt,famed brain than in the ear or nose or other . organ of sense. “The baby’s eye has, however, some beginner’s handicaps of its own. Bor example, the eyes of virtually all white children are very ’ light in colour at birth; most of them are blue. The darkening pigment , which. Nature is to provide later on as a protection against the too brilliant sunlight of southern lands has not yet been manufactured in the tender tissues^ “Eye: movement is not yet accurate or speedy. The muscles whicn move the young adult’s eyes like lightning from one side or another, to seek pleasure or to watch for danger, have not yet learned their duties or fallen under the sway of the nerve centres deep in the base,, of the brain. j “Even for many months after birth one*'incompleteness of the baby’s eye may last. The eye is very likely to be farsighted, like the eye of an old man. “When babies are born their.eyeballs are seldom quite finished. It is probable that neaply all ( babies have sight blurred badly and can see objects close at hand only if their eyes are fitted ■with tiny glasses like little old men. Babies a few weeks old sometimes recognise persons at a little distance better than yheii the person is first seen close at hand. Nature will correct this ■presently) for the eyeball grows gradually longer and soon forms the necessary sharp focus at just the right distance from the eye’s lens. ’’ Another thing' probably wrong with the sight of young babies is that they are colour-blind,, the author tells us. Not long ago, he says, Professor F. M. Gregg, of Nebraska Wesleyan University, found that even cats an d dogs see colours very poorly. Raccoons are more completely colour blind. The same fact has been found by Dr. A. E. Hopkins about mice. If baby seems to like mama's red dress, that is not apt to be because of the colour. More probably the clothes have different smells, or one dress is brighter and lighter than

the other. To quote again:— “A few people are completely colour blind and also ‘day blind.’ In the dark these people see well enough. ' In the strong light of day they cannot see at all. Perhaps some babies, at birth, have this complete kind of colour blindness and day blindness combined, due to the failure of the cones in their eyes to form in time. It is probable, however, that this complete kind of colour blindness is due to the brain rather than the eye. “The distinguished English physiologist, Dr. Ernest H. Starling, recently concluded that partially colour blind individuals have something wrong with the sorting machinery in the brain, not with the perceiving machinery in the eye. This is probably what is wrong with babies’ eyes. “A few months ago an eighteen-

year-old girl at-Lincoln, Nebraska, suddenly acquired vher sight after having

been, blind from birth. Her experi- > enceSj news dispatches report, were peculiar. She could see a chair, but she had no faintest idea what it was. When she went and felt the chair she knew ihstantly. One by one, she needed laboriously to learn the looks of

familiar things that she knew only by touch. -Just so, Dr. Lewis’s theory says, the baby needs to learn the looks of everything, “This learning is probably not unlike learning to walk or to speak. Perhaps in the long distant future babio* ■will be born able to walk and speak within a few days of weeks. Nothing like that has happened yet. “Very little is known about the order

in .which the five senses develop in a baby or are learned by the baby’* train. It is a field of scientific investigation largely, neglected; perhaps for thb quite natural reason that even scientists are more interested in babies as human individuals than as experimental material to be studied. It is

probable, however, that the pense of touch is almost th« first sense to be understood and used by the inftfnt brain, if not the very first. Before a baby .iCftn do anything else it shows signs of discomfort or comfort. .It can

feel and seize things before it can look or listen.

“Next to this touch sense the sense ol’ hearing probably comes to be understood and used. The American psychologist, Dr. John B. Watson, observed that babies are frightened by loud noise when still too young for lights or other visible things to have apparent elfect. Last of all to develop, it is probable, is the sense which is to be the master of all in later life—the sense of sight. “The world of a few-days-old baby must be an extraordinary world, fortunately unremembered by the time its confused images have been sorted out and understood. Blotches of light come and go as day begins or ends. Dim gray shapes move about, bring food, do comfortable or uncomfortable things to the baby’s bed or clothes. Sltange noises clamour for admission and recognition in the confused baby brain. No wonder that babies like to forget it all as often as they can and go to sleep.”.