The Mind of the Child Part 32

"That, where the eye, before the cataract is removed, has only been capable of discerning light, without being able to distinguish colors, objects after its removal will seem to touch the eye, and there will be no knowledge of their outline, which confirms the observations made by Chesselden.

"That where the eye has previously distinguished colors, there must also be an imperfect knowledge of distances, but not of outline, which, however, will be very soon acquired, as happened in Ware's cases. This is proved by the history of the first boy, who, before the operation had no knowledge of colors or distances, but after it, when his eye had only arrived at the same state that the second boy's was in before the operation, he had learned that the objects were at a distance and of different colors.

"That when a child has acquired a new sense, nothing but great pain or absolute coercion will prevent him from making use of it."

VI. THE WARDROP CASE.

James Wardrop reports ("Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for 1826," iii, 529-540, London, 1826):

"A girl who was observed, during the first months of her infancy, to have something peculiar in the appearance of her eyes and an unusual groping manner which made her parents suspect that she had defective vision, had an operation performed on both eyes at the age of about six months. The right eye was entirely destroyed in consequence. The left eye was preserved, but the child could only distinguish a very light from a very dark room without having the power to perceive even the situation of the window through which the light entered, though in sunshine or in bright moonlight she knew the direction from which the light emanated. In this case no light could reach the retina except such rays as could pa.s.s through the substance of the iris. Until her forty-sixth year the patient could not perceive objects and had no notion of colors. On the 26th of January I introduced a very small needle through the cornea and the center of the iris; but I could not destroy any of the adhesions which had shut up the pupillar opening. After this operation she said she could distinguish more light, but she could perceive neither forms nor colors. On the 8th of February the iris (a portion of it) was divided. The light became offensive to her. She complained of its brightness, and was frequently observed trying to see her hands; but it was evident that her vision was very imperfect, for, although there was an incision made in the iris, some opaque matter lay behind the opening, which must have greatly obstructed the entrance of light.

"On the 17th of February a third operation. The opening was enlarged and the opaque matter removed. The operation being performed at my house, she returned home in a carriage, with her eye covered only with a loose piece of silk, and the first thing she noticed was a hackney-coach pa.s.sing, when she exclaimed, 'What is that large thing that has pa.s.sed by us?' In the course of the evening she requested her brother to show her his watch, concerning which she expressed much curiosity, and she looked at it a considerable time, holding it close to her eye. She was asked what she saw, and she said there was a dark and a bright side; she pointed to the hour of twelve, and smiled. Her brother asked her if she saw anything more. She replied, 'Yes,' and pointed to the hour of six and to the hands of the watch. She then looked at the chain and seals, and observed that one of the seals was bright, which was the case. The following day I asked her to look again at the watch, which she refused to do, saying that the light was offensive to her eye and that she felt very stupid, meaning that she was much confused by the visible world thus for the first time opened to her.

"On the third day she observed the doors on the opposite side of the street and asked if they were red, but they were, in fact, of an oak-color. In the evening she looked at her brother's face and said that she saw his nose. He asked her to touch it, which she did. He then slipped a handkerchief over his face and asked her to look again, when she playfully pulled it off and asked, 'What is that?'

"On the sixth day she told us that she saw better than she had done on any preceding day; 'but I can not tell what I do see. I am quite stupid.' She felt disappointed in not having the power of distinguishing at once by her eye objects which she could so readily distinguish from one another by feeling them.

"On the seventh day she observed that the mistress of the house was tall. She asked what the color of her gown was, to which she was answered that it was blue. 'So is that thing on your head,'

she then observed, which was the case; 'and your handkerchief, that is a different color,' which was also correct. She added, 'I see you pretty well, I think.' The teacups and saucers underwent an examination. 'What are they like?' her brother asked her. 'I don't know,' she replied, 'they look very queer to me, but I can tell what they are in a minute when I touch them.'

She distinguished an orange, but could form no notion of what it was till she touched it. She seemed now to have become more cheerful, and she was very sanguine that she would find her newly acquired faculty of more use to her when she returned home, where everything was familiar to her.

"On the eighth day she asked her brother 'what he was helping himself to?' and when she was told it was a gla.s.s of port wine, she replied, 'Port wine is dark, and looks to me very ugly.' She observed, when candles were brought into the room, her brother's face in the mirror as well as that of a lady who was present; she also walked for the first time without a.s.sistance from her chair to a sofa which was on the opposite side of the room and back again to the chair. When at tea she took notice of the tray, observed the shining of the j.a.pan-work, and asked 'what the color was round the edge?' she was told that it was yellow, upon which she remarked, 'I will know that again.'

"On the ninth day she came down-stairs to breakfast in great spirits. She said to her brother, 'I see you very well to-day,'

and came up to him and shook hands. She also observed a ticket on a window of a house on the opposite side of the street ('a lodging to let'), and her brother, to convince himself of her seeing it, took her to the window three separate times, and to his surprise and gratification she pointed it out to him distinctly on each trial.

"She spent a great part of the eleventh day looking out of the window, and spoke very little.

"On the twelfth day she went to walk with her brother. The clear blue sky first attracted her notice, and she said, 'It is the prettiest thing I have ever seen yet, and equally pretty every time I turn round and look at it.' She distinguished the street from the foot-pavement distinctly, and stepped from one to the other like a person accustomed to the use of her eyes. Her great curiosity, and the manner in which she stared at the variety of objects and pointed to them, exciting the observation of many by-standers, her brother soon conducted her home, much against her will.

"On the evening of the thirteenth day she observed that there was a different tea-tray, and that it was not a pretty one, but had a dark border, which was a correct description. Her brother asked her to look in the mirror and tell him if she saw his face in it, to which she answered, evidently disconcerted: 'I see my own; let me go away.'

"On the fourteenth day she drove in a carriage four miles, and noticed the trees, and likewise the river Thames as she crossed Vauxhall Bridge. At this time it was bright sunshine, and she said something dazzled her when she looked on the water.

"On the fifteenth day she walked to a chapel. The people pa.s.sing on the pavement startled her, and once when a gentleman was going past her who had a white waistcoat and a blue coat with yellow b.u.t.tons, which the sunshine brought full in her view, she started so as to draw her brother, who was walking with her, off the pavement. She distinguished the clergyman moving his hands in the pulpit, and observed that he held something in them. This was a white handkerchief.

"On the sixteenth day she went in a coach through the town, and appeared much entertained with the bustle in the streets. On asking her how she saw on that day, she answered: 'I see a great deal, if I could only tell what I do see; but surely I am very stupid.'

"On the seventeenth day, when her brother asked her how she was, she replied: 'I am well, and see better; but don't tease me with too many questions till I have learned a little better how to make use of my eye. All that I can say is, that I am sure, from what I do see, a great change has taken place, but I can not describe what I feel.'

"On the eighteenth day, when pieces of paper one inch and a half square, differently colored, were presented to her, she not only distinguished them at once from one another, but gave a decided preference to some colors, liking yellow most, and then pale pink. When desirous of examining an object, she had considerable difficulty in directing her eye to it and finding out its position, moving her hand as well as her eye in various directions, as a person when blindfolded or in the dark gropes with his hands for what he wishes to touch. She also distinguished a large from a small object when they were both held up before her for comparison. She said she saw different forms in various objects which were shown to her. On asking what she meant by different forms, such as long, round, and square, and desiring her to draw with her finger these forms on her other hand, and then presenting to her eye the respective forms, she pointed to them exactly; she not only distinguished small from large objects, but knew what was meant by above and below.

A figure, drawn with ink, was placed before her eye, having one end broad and the other narrow, and she saw the positions as they really were, and not inverted.

"She could also perceive motions, for, when a gla.s.s of water was placed on the table before her, on approaching her hand near it, it was moved quickly to a greater distance, upon which she immediately said: 'You move it; you take it away.'

"She seemed to have the greatest difficulty in finding out the distance of any object; for, when an object was held close to her eye, she would search for it by stretching her hand far beyond its position, while on other occasions she groped close to her own face for a thing far removed from her.

"She learned with facility the names of the different colors, and two days after the colored papers had been shown to her, on coming into a room the color of which was crimson, she observed that it was red. She also observed some pictures hanging on the red wall of the room in which she was sitting, distinguishing several small figures in them, but not knowing what they represented, and admiring the gilt frames. On the same day she walked round a pond, and was pleased with the glistening of the sun's rays on the water, as well as with the blue sky and green shrubs, the colors of which she named correctly.

"She had as yet acquired, by the use of her sight, but very little knowledge of any forms, and was unable to apply the information gained by this new sense, and to compare it with what she had been accustomed to acquire by her sense of touch.

When, therefore, a silver pencil-case and a large key were given her to examine with her hands, she discriminated and knew each distinctly; but when they were placed on the table, side by side, though she distinguished each with her eye, yet she could not tell which was the pencil-case and which was the key.

"On the twenty-fifth day after the operation she drove in a carriage for an hour in the Regent's Park, and asked more questions, on her way there, than usual, about the objects surrounding her, such as, 'What is that?' 'It is a soldier,' she was answered. 'And that? See, see!' These were candles of various colors in a tallow-chandler's window. 'Who is that that has pa.s.sed us just now?' It was a person on horseback. 'But what is that on the pavement, red?' It was some ladies who wore red shawls. On going into the park she was asked if she could guess what any of the objects were. 'Oh, yes,' she replied, 'there is the sky; that is the gra.s.s; yonder is water, and two white things,' which were two swans.

"When she left London, forty-two days after the operation, she had acquired a pretty accurate notion of colors and their different shades and names. She had not yet acquired anything like an accurate knowledge of distance or of forms, and, up to this period, she continued to be very much confused with every new object at which she looked. Neither was she yet able, without considerable difficulty and numerous fruitless trials, to direct her eye to an object; so that, when she attempted to look at anything, she turned her head in various directions, until her eye caught the object of which it was in search."

Remarks on the Sixth Case.

This case has been adduced as a proof that the sense of sight is sufficient, without aid from the sense of touch, to perceive whether an object is brought nearer the eye or carried farther from it. But John Stuart Mill rightly observes, in opposition to this ("Dissertations and Discussions," ii, 113; London, 1859), that the observation we are concerned with was not made "till the eighteenth day after the operation, by which time a middle-aged woman might well have acquired the experience necessary for distinguishing so simple a phenomenon."

Besides, she was very uncertain in her judgment of distances, and, in her attempts to seize with the hand new and distant objects, she frequently acted exactly like an infant.

VII. THE FRANZ CASE.

J. C. A. Franz, of Leipsic, communicates the following to the "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society" (by Sir Benjamin C.

Brodie), (London, 1841; i, pp. 59-69):

"F. J. is the son of a physician. He is endowed with an excellent understanding, quick power of conception, and retentive memory. At his birth, both eyes were found to be turned inward to such an extent that a portion of the cornea was hidden by the inner canthus, and in both pupils there was a yellowish-white discoloration. That the strabismus and cataract of both eyes in this case were congenital is evident from the testimony both of the parents and of the nurse. The latter held a light before the eyes of the child when he was a few months old, of which he took no notice. I ascertained also from her that the eyeb.a.l.l.s did not move hither and thither, but were always turned inward, and that but rarely either the one or the other was moved from the internal canthus.

"Toward the end of the second year, as was stated to me, the operation of keratonyxis was performed on the right eye, upon which a severe iritis ensued, terminating in atrophy of the eyeball. Within the next four years two similar operations were performed on the left eye without success. The color of the opacity became, however, of a clearer white, and the patient acquired a certain sensation of light, which he did not seem to have had before the operation.

"At the end of June, 1840, the patient, being then seventeen years of age, was brought to me. I found the condition of things as follows: Both eyes were so much inverted that nearly one half the cornea was hidden. The left eye he could move voluntarily outward, but not without exertion; it returned immediately inward when the influence of the will had ceased. The left eyeball was of the natural size and elasticity. The patient had not the slightest perception of light with the right eye; the stimulus of light had no effect on the pupil. The pupil of the left eye, which was not round, but drawn angularly downward and inward, did not alter in dimension with the movements of the eye nor from the stimulus of light. On examining the eye by looking straight into it through the pupil, the anterior wall of the capsule appeared opaque in its whole extent, and of a color and l.u.s.ter like mother-of-pearl. On looking from the temporal side in an oblique direction into the pupil, there was visible in the anterior wall of the capsule a very small perpendicular cleft of about one line and a quarter in length.

"This cleft was situated so far from the center of the pupil that it was entirely covered by the iris. With this eye the patient had a perception of light, and was even capable of perceiving colors of an intense and decided tone. He believed himself, moreover, able to perceive about one third of a square inch of any bright object, if held at the distance of half an inch or an inch from the eye, and obliquely in such a direction as to reflect the light strongly toward the pupil. But this, I am convinced, was a mere delusion, for all rays of light falling in the direction of the optic axis must have been intercepted and reflected by the opaque capsule. By these rays, therefore, a perception of light, indeed, might be conveyed, but certainly no perception of objects. On the other hand, it seems probable that the lateral cleft in the capsule permitted rays of light to pa.s.s into the interior of the eye. But as this small aperture was situated entirely behind the iris, those rays only would have permeated which came in a very oblique direction from the temporal side. Admitting, then, these rays of light to pa.s.s through the cleft, still on account of their obliquity they could produce but a very imperfect image, because they impinged upon an unfavorable portion of the retina. Moreover, I satisfied myself by experiments, that the patient could not in the least discern objects by sight. My experiments led me to the conclusion that his belief that he really saw objects resulted solely from his imagination combined with his power of reasoning. In feeling an object and bringing it in contact with the eyelids and the cheek, an idea of the object was produced, which was judged of and corrected according to the experience he had gained by constant practice.

"The patient's sense of touch had attained an extraordinary degree of perfection. In order to examine an object minutely he conveyed it to his lips.

"On the 10th of July, 1840, I performed an operation on the left eye. The light was so painful to him that I could not try any experiments immediately after the operation. Both eyes were closed with narrow strips of court-plaster, and treated with iced water for forty-eight hours. The patient suffered from _muscae volitantes_, and could not bear even a mild degree of light falling on the closed lids. After the lapse of a few weeks, the _muscae volitantes_ were greatly mitigated, and the intolerance of light ceased.

"On opening the eye for the first time on the third day after the operation, I asked the patient what he could see; he answered that he saw an extensive field of light, in which everything appeared dull, confused, and in motion. He could not distinguish objects. The pain produced by the light forced him to close the eye immediately.

"Two days afterward the eye, which had been kept closed by means of court-plaster, was again opened. He now described what he saw as a number of opaque watery spheres, which moved with the movements of the eye, but when the eye was at rest remained stationary, and then partly covered each other. Two days after this the eye was again opened. The same phenomena were again observed, but the spheres were less opaque and somewhat transparent; their movements more steady; they appeared to cover each other more than before. He was now for the first time able, as he said, to look through the spheres, and to perceive a difference, but merely a difference, in the surrounding objects.

When he directed his eye steadily toward an object, the visual impression produced by the object was painful and very imperfect, because the eye, on account of its intolerance of light, could not be kept open long enough for the formation of the idea as derived from visual sensation. The appearance of spheres diminished daily; they became smaller, clearer, and more pellucid, allowed objects to be seen more distinctly, and disappeared entirely after two weeks. The _muscae volitantes_, which had the form of black, immovable, and horizontal stripes, appeared, every time the eye was opened, in a direction upward and inward. When the eye was closed he observed, especially in the evening, in an outward and upward direction, an appearance of dark blue, violet, and red colors; these colors became gradually less intense, were shaded into bright orange, yellow, and green, which latter colors alone eventually remained, and in the course of five weeks disappeared entirely. As soon as the intolerance of light had so far abated that the patient could observe an object without pain, and for a sufficient time to gain an idea of it, the following experiments were made on different days.

"_First Experiment._--Silk ribbons of different colors, fastened on a black ground, were employed to show the complementary colors. The patient recognized the different colors, with the exception of yellow and green, which he frequently confounded, but could distinguish when both were exhibited at the same time.

He could point out each color correctly when a variety was shown him at the same time. Gray pleased him best; the effect of red, orange, and yellow was painful; that of violet and brown not painful, but disagreeable. Black produced subjective colors, and white occasioned the recurrence of _muscae volitantes_ in a most vehement degree.

"_Second Experiment._--The patient sat with his back to the light, and kept his eye closed. A sheet of paper on which two strong black lines had been drawn, the one horizontal, the other vertical, was placed before him, at the distance of about three feet. He was now allowed to open the eye, and after attentive examination he called the lines by their right denominations.

When I asked him to point out with his finger the horizontal line, he moved his hand slowly, as if feeling, and pointed to the vertical; but after a short time, observing his error, he corrected himself. The outline in black of a square [six inches in diameter], within which a circle had been drawn, and within the latter a triangle, was, after careful examination, recognized and correctly described by him. When he was asked to point out either of the figures, he never moved his hand directly and decidedly, but always as if feeling, and with the greatest caution; he pointed them out, however, correctly. A zigzag and a spiral line, both drawn on a sheet of paper, he observed to be different, but could not describe them otherwise than by imitating their forms with his finger in the air. He said he had no idea of those figures.

"_Third Experiment._--The windows of the room were darkened, with the exception of one, toward which the patient, closing his eye, turned his back. At the distance of three feet, and on a level with the eye, a solid _cube_ and a _sphere_, each of four inches diameter, were placed before him. I now let him open his eye. After attentively examining these bodies, he said he saw a _quadrangular_ and a _circular_ figure, and after some consideration he p.r.o.nounced the one a _square_ and the other a _disk_. His eye being then closed, the cube was taken away, and a disk of equal size subst.i.tuted and placed next to the sphere.

On again opening his eye he observed no difference in these objects, but regarded them both as disks. The solid cube was now placed in a somewhat oblique position before the eye, and close beside it a figure cut out of pasteboard, representing a plane outline prospect of the cube when in this position. Both objects he took to be something like flat quadrates. A pyramid, placed before him with one of its sides toward his eye, he saw as a plane triangle. This object was now turned a little, so as to present two of its sides to view, but rather more of one side than of the other; after considering and examining it for a long time, he said that this was a very extraordinary figure; it was neither a triangle, nor a quadrangle, nor a circle; he had no idea of it, and could not describe it. 'In fact,' said he, 'I must give it up.' On the conclusion of these experiments I asked him to describe the sensations the objects had produced, whereupon he said that immediately on opening his eye he had discovered a difference in the two objects, the cube and the sphere, placed before him, and perceived that they were not drawings; but that he had not been able to form from them the idea of a square and a disk, _until he perceived a sensation of what he saw in the points of his fingers_, as if he really touched the objects. When I gave the three bodies, the sphere, cube, and pyramid, into his hand, he was much surprised that he had not recognized them as such by sight, as he was well acquainted with them by touch. These experiments prove the correctness of the hypothesis I have advanced elsewhere on the well-known question put by Mr. Molyneux to Locke, which was answered by both these gentlemen in the negative.

"_Fourth Experiment._--In a vessel containing water to about the depth of one foot was placed a musket-ball, and on the surface of the water a piece of pasteboard of the same form, size, and color as the ball. The patient could perceive no difference in the position of these bodies; he believed both to be upon the surface of the water. 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 toward it, but only by feeling about with the rod.

On being questioned with respect to reflected light, he said that he was always obliged to bear in mind that the looking-gla.s.s was fastened to the wall in order to correct his idea of the apparent situation of objects behind the gla.s.s.

"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, etc., 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 different points of view by turning his head to the right and to the left. Of perspective in pictures he had, of course, no idea; it appeared to him unnatural that the figure of a man represented in the front of a picture should be larger than a house or 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 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. Although the newly-acquired sense afforded him many pleasures, the great number of strange and extraordinary 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."