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 men, 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 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 
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 2 1 st 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 
