66 DR. FRANZ ON THE CURE OF CONGENITAL BLINDNESS, 



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 towards 

 it, but only by feeling about with the rod. On being questioned with respect to re- 

 flected 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 rnen, horses, &c., 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 diffe- 

 rent points of view by turning his head to the right and to the left. Of perspective 

 in pictures he had of course no idea ; he could distinguish the individual objects in a 

 painting, but could not understand the meaning of the whole picture ; it appeared to 

 him unnatural, for instance, that the figure of a man represented in the front of the 

 picture should be larger than a house or a 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 notable, 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 

 in his imagination, 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 

 presented to his view ; the eyes he thought most beautiful, especially when in mo- 

 tion ; the nose disagreeable, on account of its form and great prominence ; the move- 

 ment of the lower jaw in eating he considered very ugly. Although the newly-ac- 

 quired sense afforded him many pleasures, the great number of strange and extraor- 

 dinary 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. 



On the 21st of September I operated, in the presence of several medical gentlemen, 

 in one sitting, on both eyes for the congenital strabismus. The lids were fixed by the 



