SIXTH SENSE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 August 1940, Page 8

SIXTH SENSE

AMAZING POWERS DEVELOP AFTER BLINDNESS.

Most of us have only five senses. Margaret McAvoy had a sixth sense which took the place of sight when she went blind.

Few things in the story of human achievement are more curious than Margaret's exceptional possession. It mystified all the doctors who tried io fathom, it, and she died leaving them no wiser than she had been at first.

Born in June, 1800, Margaret died at 20. She had been a normal child, and there was nothing remarkable about her- till some time after she went blind at 15 or 16. Her amazing powers were discovered quite by accident, when one day her father gave her a Bible, and she began reading as if she could see. “Can you see?” they asked her, hoping that in some strange way her sight had suddenly returned. But she shook her head. She was as blind as ever. Then how did she read? No one knows, and perhaps no one ever will Know. Passing her fingers over the page she picked out GO words a minute. When a piece of white paper on which faint red and blue lines were ruled was given her, she indicated the red lines without hesitation. When a frame in which seven pieces of coloured glass had been fitted was handed to her, this blind girl passed her fingers over them, and named every colour correctly.

“Which of these two liquids is water and which spirits of wine?” she was asked. She at once indicated which was which, saying that water felt cooler than the spirits of wine. Standing before a window she saw everyone who passed by, and correctly named the colour of their clothes, though her eyes were tightly bandaged. When she was asked to look at a page of print through a magnifying glass, she touched the glass with her fingers and smilingly declared that the letters felt bigger. She could read small print with ease if the glass was al hand. If she was made to turn away from a piece of furniture, she would instantly describe its shape and use by merely pointing her hands at it. Uncanny as all this must appear, it is vouched for by medical men of unimpeachable tharaclcr. How she distinguished shapes, and much more, how she could tell one colour from another, w(“ cannot say. All we know is that she did it.