zvho recovered his Sight when Seven Tears of Age. 
some similar instances, had reason to suspect that children, 
from whom cataracts had been extracted, had a notion of dis- 
tance the first moment they were enabled to see. In the instance 
particularly of a young gentleman from Ireland, fourteen years 
old, from each of whose eyes I extracted a cataract, in the year 
1794, in the presence of Dr. Hamilton, Physician to the London 
Hospital, and who, before the operation, assured me, as did his 
friends, that he never had seen the figure of any object. Dr. Ha- 
milton and myself were much astonished by the facility with, 
which, on the first experiment, he took hold of my hand at dif- 
ferent distances, mentioning whether it was brought nearer to, 
or carried further from him, and conveying his hand to mine in 
a circular direction, that we might be the better satisfied of the 
accuracy with which he did it. In this case, however, and in 
others of a like nature, although the patients had certainly been 
blind from early infancy, I couid not satisfy myself that they 
had not, before this period, enjoyed a sufficient degree of sight 
to impress the image of visible objects on their minds, and to 
give them ideas which could not afterwards be entirely oblite- 
rated. In the instance of Master W. however, no suspicion of 
this kind could occur; since, in addition to the declaration of 
himself and his mother, it was proved by the testimony of the 
surgeon who examined his eyes in the country, that the cataracts 
were fully formed before he was a year old. And I beg leave 
to add further, that on making inquiries of two children, between 
seven and eight years of age, now under my care, both of whom 
have been blind from birth, and on whom no operation has yet 
been performed, I find that the knowledge they have of colours, 
limited as it is, is sufficient to enable them to tell whether co- 
loured objects be brought nearer to, or carried further from 
