“SOUL-BLINDNESS.”

Golden Bay Argus, Volume X, Issue 87, 31 January 1907, Page 2

“SOUL-BLINDNESS.”

THE LATEST OF NEW YORK DISEASES. I •; “feoul-blindness” is the name given by Professor Schuster, of Berlin, to the latest discovered disease. An elderly man who had received a good education arrived recently from Russia and placed himself under Schuster's care. Ho was suffering from* curious laiises of memory and mental association. Schuster put him under observation and found he could not read, that the series of letters forming words perfectly familiar to him Gonveyed no meaning to his mind. Ha spoke quite coherently and showed na other symptoms of disease. Ha was asked to write the simple sentence, “I am hungry,” but when Schuster asked him to name the individual letters and point them out ha could not do so. His sight was normal ; he recognised and named all the objects around him, but when the simplest objects were sketched on paper he was utterly at fault and unable to say whether a boot was a tree or a horse. Professor Schuster explains the disease by saying the connection between his visual organs and his powers of associating ideas has been sundered, and it is doubtful whether the connection will ever again be made.

Equally singular is a discovery made by Dr. Hertwig, of Stuttgart, who has a woman under treatment who, while in a state of somnolency is in possession of all her waking faculties ; when addre&sed she answers clearly and sensibly ;' in speaking to her it is not necessary to raise the voice above a whisper. Her ©yes are closed as in ordinary sleep, but when spoken to she sees everything around her with which she is familiar steeped in a deep blue atmosphere.