"F. J. is the son of a physician. He is endowed with an excellent understanding, quick power of conception, and retentive memory. At his birth, both eyes were found to be turned inward to such an extent that a portion of the cornea was hidden by the inner canthus, and in both pupils there was a yellowish-white discoloration. That the strabismus and cataract of both eyes in this case were congenital is evident from the testimony both of the parents and of the nurse. The latter held a light before the eyes of the child when he was a few months old, of which he took no notice. I ascertained also from her that the eyeballs did not move hither and thither, but were always turned inward, and that but rarely either the one or the other was moved from the internal canthus.
"Toward the end of the second year, as was stated to me, the operation of keratonyxis was performed on the right eye, upon which a severe iritis ensued, terminating in atrophy of the eyeball. Within the next four years two similar operations were performed on the left eye without success. The color of the opacity became, however, of a clearer white, and the patient acquired a certain sensation of light, which he did not seem to have had before the operation.
"At the end of June, 1840, the patient, being then seventeen years of age, was brought to me. I found the condition of things as follows: Both eyes were so much inverted that nearly one half the cornea was hidden. The left eye he could move voluntarily outward, but not without exertion; it returned immediately inward when the influence of the will had ceased. The left eyeball was of the natural size and elasticity. The patient had not the slightest perception of light with the right eye; the stimulus of light had no effect on the pupil. The pupil of the left eye, which was not round, but drawn angularly downward and inward, did not alter in dimension with the movements of the eye nor from the stimulus of light. On examining the eye by looking straight into it through the pupil, the anterior wall of the capsule appeared opaque in its whole extent, and of a color and luster like mother-of-pearl. On looking from the temporal side in an oblique direction into the pupil, there was visible in the anterior wall of the capsule a very small perpendicular cleft of about one line and a quarter in length.
"This cleft was situated so far from the center of the pupil that it was entirely covered by the iris. With this eye the patient had a perception of light, and was even capable of perceiving colors of an intense and decided tone. He believed himself, moreover, able to perceive about one third of a square inch of any bright object, if held at the distance of half an inch or an inch from the eye, and obliquely in such a direction as to reflect the light strongly toward the pupil. But this, I am convinced, was a mere delusion, for all rays of light falling in the direction of the optic axis must have been intercepted and reflected by the opaque capsule. By these rays, therefore, a perception of light, indeed, might be conveyed, but certainly no perception of objects. On the other hand, it seems probable that the lateral cleft in the capsule permitted rays of light to pass into the interior of the eye. But as this small aperture was situated entirely behind the iris, those rays only would have permeated which came in a very oblique direction from the temporal side. Admitting, then, these rays of light to pass through the cleft, still on account of their obliquity they could produce but a very imperfect image, because they impinged upon an unfavorable portion of the retina. Moreover, I satisfied myself by experiments, that the patient could not in the least discern objects by sight. My experiments led me to the conclusion that his belief that he really saw objects resulted solely from his imagination combined with his power of reasoning. In feeling an object and bringing it in contact with the eyelids and the cheek, an idea of the object was produced, which was judged of and corrected according to the experience he had gained by constant practice.
"The patient's sense of touch had attained an extraordinary degree of perfection. In order to examine an object minutely he conveyed it to his lips.
"On the 10th of July, 1840, I performed an operation on the left eye. The light was so painful to him that I could not try any experiments immediately after the operation. Both eyes were closed with narrow strips of court-plaster, and treated with iced water for forty-eight hours. The patient suffered from muscæ volitantes, and could not bear even a mild degree of light falling on the closed lids. After the lapse of a few weeks, the muscæ volitantes were greatly mitigated, and the intolerance of light ceased.
"On opening the eye for the first time on the third day after the operation, I asked the patient what he could see; he answered that he saw an extensive field of light, in which everything appeared dull, confused, and in motion. He could not distinguish objects. The pain produced by the light forced him to close the eye immediately.
"Two days afterward the eye, which had been kept closed by means of court-plaster, was again opened. He now described what he saw as a number of opaque watery spheres, which moved with the movements of the eye, but when the eye was at rest remained stationary, and then partly covered each other. Two days after this the eye was again opened. The same phenomena were again observed, but the spheres were less opaque and somewhat transparent; their movements more steady; they appeared to cover each other more than before. He was now for the first time able, as he said, to look through the spheres, and to perceive a difference, but merely a difference, in the surrounding objects. When he directed his eye steadily toward an object, the visual impression produced by the object was painful and very imperfect, because the eye, on account of its intolerance of light, could not be kept open long enough for the formation of the idea as derived from visual sensation. The appearance of spheres diminished daily; they became smaller, clearer, and more pellucid, allowed objects to be seen more distinctly, and disappeared entirely after two weeks. The muscæ volitantes, which had the form of black, immovable, and horizontal stripes, appeared, every time the eye was opened, in a direction upward and inward. When the eye was closed he observed, especially in the evening, in an outward and upward direction, an appearance of dark blue, violet, and red colors; these colors became gradually less intense, were shaded into bright orange, yellow, and green, which latter colors alone eventually remained, and in the course of five weeks disappeared entirely. As soon as the intolerance of light had so far abated that the patient could observe an object without pain, and for a sufficient time to gain an idea of it, the following experiments were made on different days.
"First Experiment.—Silk ribbons of different colors, fastened on a black ground, were employed to show the complementary colors. The patient recognized the different colors, with the exception of yellow and green, which he frequently confounded, but could distinguish when both were exhibited at the same time. He could point out each color correctly when a variety was shown him at the same time. Gray pleased him best; the effect of red, orange, and yellow was painful; that of violet and brown not painful, but disagreeable. Black produced subjective colors, and white occasioned the recurrence of muscæ volitantes in a most vehement degree.
"Second Experiment.—The patient sat with his back to the light, and kept his eye closed. A sheet of paper on which two strong black lines had been drawn, the one horizontal, the other vertical, was placed before him, at the distance of about three feet. He was now allowed to open the eye, and after attentive examination he called the lines by their right denominations. When I asked him to point out with his finger the horizontal line, he moved his hand slowly, as if feeling, and pointed to the vertical; but after a short time, observing his error, he corrected himself. The outline in black of a square [six inches in diameter], within which a circle had been drawn, and within the latter a triangle, was, after careful examination, recognized and correctly described by him. When he was asked to point out either of the figures, he never moved his hand directly and decidedly, but always as if feeling, and with the greatest caution; he pointed them out, however, correctly. A zigzag and a spiral line, both drawn on a sheet of paper, he observed to be different, but could not describe them otherwise than by imitating their forms with his finger in the air. He said he had no idea of those figures.
"Third Experiment.—The windows of the room were darkened, with the exception of one, toward which the patient, closing his eye, turned his back. At the distance of three feet, and on a level with the eye, a solid cube and a sphere, each of four inches diameter, were placed before him. I now let him open his eye. After attentively examining these bodies, he said he saw a quadrangular and a circular figure, and after some consideration he pronounced the one a square and the other a disk. His eye being then closed, the cube was taken away, and a disk of equal size substituted and placed next to the sphere. On again opening his eye he observed no difference in these objects, but regarded them both as disks. The solid cube was now placed in a somewhat oblique position before the eye, and close beside it a figure cut out of pasteboard, representing a plane outline prospect of the cube when in this position. Both objects he took to be something like flat quadrates. A pyramid, placed before him with one of its sides toward his eye, he saw as a plane triangle. This object was now turned a little, so as to present two of its sides to view, but rather more of one side than of the other; after considering and examining it for a long time, he said that this was a very extraordinary figure; it was neither a triangle, nor a quadrangle, nor a circle; he had no idea of it, and could not describe it. 'In fact,' said he, 'I must give it up.' On the conclusion of these experiments I asked him to describe the sensations the objects had produced, whereupon he said that immediately on opening his eye he had discovered a difference in the two objects, the cube and the sphere, placed before him, and perceived that they were not drawings; but that he had not been able to form from them the idea of a square and a disk, until he perceived a sensation of what he saw in the points of his fingers, as if he really touched the objects. When I gave the three bodies, the sphere, cube, and pyramid, into his hand, he was much surprised that he had not recognized them as such by sight, as he was well acquainted with them by touch. These experiments prove the correctness of the hypothesis I have advanced elsewhere on the well-known question put by Mr. Molyneux to Locke, which was answered by both these gentlemen in the negative.
"Fourth Experiment.—In a vessel containing water to about the depth of one foot was placed a musket-ball, and on the surface of the water a piece of pasteboard of the same form, size, and color as the ball. The patient could perceive no difference in the position of these bodies; he believed both to be upon the surface of the water. Pointing to the ball, I desired him to take up this object. He made an attempt to take it from the plane of the water; but, when he found he could not grasp it there, he said he had deceived himself, the objects were lying in the water, upon which I informed him of their real position. I now desired him to touch the ball which lay in the water with a small rod. He attempted this several times, but always missed his aim. He could never touch the object at the first movement of his hand toward it, but only by feeling about with the rod. On being questioned with respect to reflected light, he said that he was always obliged to bear in mind that the looking-glass was fastened to the wall in order to correct his idea of the apparent situation of objects behind the glass.
"When the patient first acquired the faculty of sight, all objects appeared to him so near that he was sometimes afraid of coming in contact with them, though they were in reality at a great distance from him. He saw everything much larger than he had supposed from the idea obtained by his sense of touch. Moving and especially living objects, such as men, horses, etc., appeared to him very large. If he wished to form an estimate of the distance of objects from his own person or of two objects from each other without moving from his place, he examined the objects from different points of view by turning his head to the right and to the left. Of perspective in pictures he had, of course, no idea; it appeared to him unnatural that the figure of a man represented in the front of a picture should be larger than a house or mountain in the background. All objects appeared to him perfectly flat. Thus, although he very well knew by his touch that the nose was prominent and the eyes sunk deeper in the head, he saw the human face only as a plane. Though he possessed an excellent memory, this faculty was at first quite deficient as regarded visible objects: he was not able, for example, to recognize visitors, unless he heard them speak, till he had seen them very frequently. Even when he had seen an object repeatedly he could form no idea of its visible qualities without having the real object before him. Heretofore when he dreamed of any persons, of his parents, for instance, he felt them and heard their voices, but never saw them; but now, after having seen them frequently, he saw them also in his dreams. The human face pleased him more than any other object. Although the newly-acquired sense afforded him many pleasures, the great number of strange and extraordinary sights was often disagreeable and wearisome to him. He said that he saw too much novelty which he could not comprehend; and, even though he could see both near and remote objects very well, he would nevertheless continually have recourse to the use of the sense of touch."
To the seven reports upon cases of persons born blind and afterward surgically treated, which are here presented in abridged form from the English originals, may be added some more recent and more accessible ones, one by Hirschberg ("Archiv für Opthalmologie," xxi, 1. Abth., S. 29 bis 42, 1875), one by A. von Hippel (ibid., xxi, 2. Abth., S. 101), and one by Dufour ("Archives des Sciences physiques et naturelles," lviii, No. 242, April, 1877, p. 420). The cases reported here are those most discussed. I have given them considerably in detail in order that the reader may form an independent judgment concerning the behavior of persons born blind and then operated upon, as that behavior is described before the modern physiological controversy over empiricism and nativism. Helmholtz ("Physiologische Optik," § 28) mentions, besides those of Chesselden and Wardrop and Ware, which he gives in abridged form, some other cases also. Others still may be found in Froriep's "Notizen" (xi, p. 177, 1825, and iv, p. 243, 1837, also xxi, p. 41, 1842), partly reported, partly cited (the latter according to Franz).
In addition to the cases here given of persons born blind and then surgically treated—persons not able to see things in space-relations before becoming blind—one more case is to be mentioned; it is that of a girl who in her seventh year (probably in consequence of the effect of dazzling sunlight) lost her sight completely, but recovered it again at the age of seventeen years after being treated with electricity. She had to begin absolutely anew to learn to name colors like a child; all measure of distance, perspective, size, had been lost for her by lack of practice (as O. Heyfelder relates in his work "Die Kindheit des Menschen," second edition, Erlangen, 1858, pp. 12-15). He says, p. 12, that the patient had been eight years blind; p. 13, that she had been ten years so. Such cases prove the great influence of experience upon vision in space, and show how little of this vision is inborn in mankind.
When we compare the acquirement of sight by the normal newly-born child and the infant with that of those born blind, we should, above all, bear in mind that the latter in general could make use of only one eye, and also that on account of the long inactivity of the retina and the absence of the crystalline lens, as well as in consequence of the numerous experiences of touch, essential differences exist. Notwithstanding this, there appears an agreement in the manner in which in both cases vision is learned, the eye is practiced, and the association of sight and touch is acquired. The seventh case in particular shows plainly how strong the analogies are.
These cases are sufficient to refute some singular assertions, e. g., that all the newly-born must see objects reversed, as even a Buffon ("Œuvres complètes," iv, 136; Paris, 1844) thought to be the fact. My boy, when I had him write, in his fifth year, the ordinary figures after a copy that I set for him, imitated the most of them, to my surprise, always in a reversed hand (Spiegelschrift, "mirror-hand"); the 1 and the 4 he continued longest to write thus, though he often made the 4 the other way, too, whereas he always wrote the 5 correctly. This, however, was, of course, not owing to imperfect sight, but to incomplete transformation of the visual idea into the motor idea required for writing. Other boys, as I am given to understand, do the same thing. For myself, I found the distinction between "right" and "left" so difficult in my childhood, that I remember vividly the trouble I had with it.
Singularly enough, Buffon assumed, in 1749, that the neglect of the double images does not yet take place at the beginning of life. Johannes Müller, in 1826, expresses the same view. But, inasmuch as in the first two or three weeks after the birth of a human being, in contrast with many animals, nothing at all can as yet be distinctly seen, it is not allowable to maintain that everything must be seen double. Rather is it true that everything is seen neither single nor double, since the very young child perceives, as yet, no forms (boundary-lines) and no distances, but merely receives impressions of light, precisely as is the case with the person born blind, in the period directly after an operation has been performed upon his eyes.
Schopenhauer (in his treatise on "Sight and Colors," first edition, Leipsic, 1816, p. 14) divined this truth. He says, "If a person who was looking out upon a wide and beautiful prospect could be in an instant wholly deprived of his intellect, then nothing of all the view would remain for him except the sensation of a very manifold reaction of his retina, which is, as it were, the raw material out of which his intellect created that view."
The new-born child has, as yet, no intellect, and therefore can not, as yet, at the beginning, see; he can merely have the sensation of light.
This opinion of mine, derived from observation of the behavior of newly-born and of very young infants (cf. the first chapter of this book), seems to me to be practically confirmed in an account given by Anselm von Feuerbach in his work on Kaspar Hauser (Anspach, 1832, p. 77).
"In the year 1828, soon after his arrival in Nuremberg, Kaspar Hauser was to look out at the window in the Vestner Tower, from which there was a view of a broad and many-colored summer landscape. Kaspar Hauser turned away; the sight was repugnant to him. At a later period, long after he had learned to speak, he gave, when questioned, the following explanation:
"'When I looked toward the window it always seemed to me as if a shutter had been put up close before my eyes, and that upon this shutter a colorer had wiped off his brushes of different colors, white, blue, green, yellow, and red, all in motley confusion. Individual things, as I now see them, I could not, at that time, perceive and distinguish upon it; it was absolutely hideous to look upon.'"
By this, as well as by the experiences with persons born blind and afterward surgically treated, it is clearly demonstrated that colors and degrees of brightness are severally apprehended before forms and distances can be perceived. The case must be the same with the normal human child in the first weeks after birth.
After discrimination of the luminous sensations, the boundary-lines of bright plane surfaces are next clearly discerned; then come forms, and, last of all, the distances of these.
With reference to this progress of the normal infant in learning to see, the accounts of persons born blind and afterward surgically treated are again of great value. After the famous question put by Molyneux to Locke, whether an intelligent person, blind from birth, would be able immediately after an operation to distinguish a sphere from a cube by means of the eye alone, had been answered in the negative, the opinion was accepted as satisfactory that such a person learns the distinction only by means of the sense of touch. Thus, the perception of difference would come later, after the sight of different forms, only by means of the tactual memory.
In truth, however, very many forms are discerned as different purely by means of the eye, without the possibility of aid from any other sense. Phenomena exclusively optical, which, like the rainbow, can not be apprehended by touch or by hearing, are distinctly perceived by the child at a very early period. Without touching, the different forms of objects would be perceived by means of sight alone, and that even by a child unable to touch, through movements of the eyes and head, changes of bodily position, of attitude and posture, and through practice in accommodation and in the observation of differences of brightness.
The fact correctly predicted by Molyneux, that those born blind but afterward surgically treated can not, by means of the eye alone, distinguish the form of a sphere from that of a cube, must accordingly be supplemented to this extent, viz., that such persons are capable, just as are normal children who can see, of learning this difference of form by means of the eye alone without the direct intervention of the sense of touch; for the co-ordination of the retinal excitations in space and time by means of the intellect, quite independently of all impressions from other departments of sense, is possible, and is in countless cases actual, just as is the learning of differences of form solely by means of the sense of touch in children who are born blind and never learn to see.
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John Bach McMaster
HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES, from the Revolution to the Civil War. By John Bach McMaster. To be completed in six volumes. Vols. I, II, III, and IV now ready. 8vo, cloth, gilt top, $2.50 each.
In the course of this narrative much is written of wars, conspiracies, and rebellions; of Presidents, of Congresses, of embassies, of treaties, of the ambition of political leaders, and of the rise of great parties in the nation. Yet the history of the people is the chief theme. At every stage of the splendid progress which separates the America of Washington and Adams from the America in which we live, it has been the author's purpose to describe the dress, the occupations, the amusements, the literary canons of the times; to note the changes of manners and morals; to trace the growth of that humane spirit which abolished punishment for debt, and reformed the discipline of prisons and of jails; to recount the manifold improvements which, in a thousand ways, have multiplied the conveniences of life and ministered to the happiness of our race; to describe the rise and progress of that long series of mechanical inventions and discoveries which is now the admiration of the world, and our just pride and boast; to tell how, under the benign influence of liberty and peace, there sprang up, in the course of a single century, a prosperity unparalleled in the annals of human affairs.
"The pledge given by Mr. McMaster, that 'the history of the people shall be the chief theme,' is punctiliously and satisfactorily fulfilled. He carries out his promise in a complete, vivid, and delightful way. We should add that the literary execution of the work is worthy of the indefatigable industry and unceasing vigilance with which the stores of historical material have been accumulated, weighed, and sifted. The cardinal qualities of style, lucidity, animation, and energy, are everywhere present. Seldom indeed has a book in which matter of substantial value has been so happily united to attractiveness of form been offered by an American author to his fellow-citizens."—New York Sun.
"To recount the marvelous progress of the American people, to describe their life, their literature, their occupations, their amusements, is Mr. McMaster's object. His theme is an important one, and we congratulate him on his success. It has rarely been our province to notice a book with so many excellences and so few defects."—New York Herald.
"Mr. McMaster at once shows his grasp of the various themes and his special capacity as a historian of the people. His aim is high, but he hits the mark."—New York Journal of Commerce.
"... The author's pages abound, too, with illustrations of the best kind of historical work, that of unearthing hidden sources of information and employing them, not after the modern style of historical writing, in a mere report, but with the true artistic method, in a well-digested narrative.... If Mr. McMaster finishes his work in the spirit and with the thoroughness and skill with which it has begun, it will take its place among the classics of American literature."—Christian Union.