A CURIOUS CASE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIX, Issue 166, 16 July 1898, Page 3 (Supplement)

A CURIOUS CASE.

SEEING BY THE NOSE,

The following curious case js related by Donilot in the 'Revue Medic'ale.' The patient was a countryman who had lost the right eye while still a child. Somo years afterwards, while climbing a cherry tree, he fell, and his face struck a sharp stick which projected from a bush. The shock was so violent that the nose, the cheek, and the left eye, with .the two eyelids and the eyebrow, were horribly mutilated.1 The surgeon, who atr tended the patient thought that, the eyeball had been completely torn away and must have adhered to the stick. A year later, after the wounds.had. healed, the man noticed one day that he could distinguish the daylight and the colour of flowers through his nose. From this time, for 5 or C years, he saw with his nose, which had become the organ of vision. He eventually became able to distinguish all objects if they were placed below him, for he was insensible to all light which came from above. The organs which were injured at the time included the eyebrow and the nose, consequently the blow could-not have been made in the direction of the axis of the eye but very obliquely. If then; the humours of the eye were discharged on the outside, and if at the same time, the lower wall of the orbit was pierced, the membranes—particularly the retinahad been preserved in the depth of the

eyev says the writer. aJI- the wounds had healed and the eyelids had closed over the ocular cavity, there must have remained in the bony case a small opening which put this cavity in communication with the nasal fosse. Thu3 the case of this man, which is truly remarkable, serves as an experimental proof of the theory by which the retina is compared to the screen in the dark room of physicists, in which the images of exterior objects are formed, even iii the absence of all refracting means, provided the luminous rays cannot reach it until after having passed through a very narrow opening.