who recovered his Sight when seven Tears of Age. ggi 
have adduced prove, that the knowledge they have of colours is 
sufficient to give them some idea of distance, even in their 
darkest state. W hen, therefore, their sight is cleared by the 
removal of the opaque crystalline, which intercepted the light, 
and the colour of objects is thereby made to appear stronger, 
will it be difficult or unphilosophical, to conceive that their ideas 
of distance will be strengthened, and so far extended as to give 
them a knowledge, even of the outline and figure of those ob- 
jects with the colour of which they were previously acquainted ? 
The case which I have here related appears to deserve notice, 
not only on account of the observations that were made by the 
patient on recovering his sight, but also on account of the hint 
which it affords to surgeons, relative both to the mode in which 
the cataract may best be removed, when children are born with 
this disorder, and the time when it is most proper to perform 
the operation. 
The Baron de Wenzel, in his ingenious Treatise on the Ca- 
taract, with great force of reasoning, deduced from the long and 
successful experience of his father and himself, recommends, in 
all cases of this disorder, without making any exceptions, the 
operation of extraction, in preference to that of depression ; and 
I believe it is now generally acknowledged by medical men, 
that, in the more common cases, his decision, as to the mode of 
operating, is perfectly well founded. The Baron admits that 
the operation is not so certain a cure in children as it is in per- 
sons of a more advanced age ; both on account of their untract- 
ableness, and because, in them, the opacity of the crystalline is 
not unfrequently accompanied with an opacity in the capsule 
that contains it. On these accounts, when children are born 
with this disorder, he advises to postpone the operation, until they 
