68 DR. FRANZ ON THE CURE OF CONGENITAL BLINDNESS. 



Paul's clock. Walking alone in the crowded streets, especially in the City, he found 

 very tedious. He said, seeing so many different things, and the quick movements of 

 the multitude of people, carriages, &c., confused his sight to such a degree, that at 

 last he could see nothing ; that the sensation produced by the object last seen had not 

 yet disappeared from the retina, when the next object made its impression thereon, 

 by which means confusion of ideas, great anxiety, and even vertigo were occasioned, 

 from which he could only free himself by closing his eyes for a few moments. 



In the middle of December an experiment was again made with spectacles. A 

 lens of seven inches focus was now of the same service as one of 5 J inches had been 

 two months before. After the operation for the strabismus he was accustomed, in 

 speaking with any person, to turn his eye away from the face, as otherwise he said 

 he felt disturbed by the looks of the person ; he had now at length learned to look 

 at the eyes of those with whom he conversed. The old habit of using the sense of 

 touch to examine objects he had not yet entirely lost. 



In the middle of February 1841, a third experiment was made with spectacles. A 

 lens of ten inches focus was of the same service as one of seven inches had been on 

 the last occasion, and one of 5:|^ inches four months ago. This proves a slow, but 

 positive amelioration of sight, and permits us to expect a still greater improvement, 

 the more so as the patient has not passed the period of puberty. If the employment 

 of spectacles were begun at the present period, although it is now more than seven 

 months since the operation was performed, there would be no further amelioration 

 of sight ; the development of the visual apparatus would be arrested. I am there- 

 fore of opinion that the use of spectacles is not to be permitted, until it is, as it were, 

 mathematically demonstrated by similar experiments with lenses, that the sight is 

 no longer improved ; by which means the faculty may in time, perhaps, reach such 

 a degree of perfection as not to require any lens at all for remote objects. 



This is the only case on record within my knowledge wherein, with a person born 

 blind and afterwards successfully operated upon at a period of life as far advanced 

 as in this instance, such experiments have ever been made. In the well-known 

 case of Cheselden, published in the Philosophical Transactions for the year 1728 

 (page 447), the patient was only in the fourteenth year of his age, and although the 

 case contains many highly interesting physiological observations, no series of syste- 

 matic experiments was instituted. Beer has also made some interesting observa- 

 tions, which, however, like those made in rather a superficial manner by Janin and 

 Daviel, tend principally to describe the impressions which the newly-acquired sense 

 had made on the mind of the person operated upon. In Ware's case the patient was 

 not born blind, but had become so at an early period of life. In the present paper I 

 have merely given the simple history of the case, without making any remark on 

 several points interesting to the pathologist and physiologist, to which I shall advert 

 on a future occasion ; the explanation and philosophy of the foregoing experiments 

 as to the sense of sight I shall attempt in another paper, which I purpose to lay 

 before this Society. 



