BLINDNESS CURED

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 May 1931, Page 3

BLINDNESS CURED

ASTONISHING SURGICAL FEAT.

SAN FRANCISCO, April 9. Eyes which never saw brought new sensations and revelations beyond expression to Earl Musselman, 22, whose vision has been made by the skill of a surgeon’s knife in Philadelphia. He was born blind, and learned to know people and objects by sound and touch, but now he can see. Musselman was born without pupils in his eyes. Six weeks ago Dr. G. H. Moore, a specialist on the staff of the Graduate Hospital in Philadelphia, performed an operation and a few days ago the bandages were removed. Musselman beheld a new world, a world of colour sensations in which years of stored up imagination became real, and many impressions were found to be wrong. . “I was completely fooled,” he said. “I thought I knew what it was all about,’ as the saying goes, but I was wrong. Besides all the things which I had wrong-impressions of, there are so many things of which I had no impression at all. The way bricks are set in a building; the way one colour is different from another, and one shade blends into another, the way tramcar tracks run straight beside each other, and the way they shine, the way a horse and the motor vehicle, move —it’s all wonderful. imagination can in no way convey an idea of colour, of the vivid beauty of flowers. I had tried to fix colours in my mind from descriptions by teachers and friends who-could see, but my conception of them was drab and dull compared wtli the wonderful colours I can see now.”

NOW LEARNING TO READ

Musselman is not able 1,0 associate tho various colour sensations with names. That is one of the, things he will have to learn. “I’m trying to read with my eyes already,” he said. “Of course, I can’t read ordinary type, but the doctors say I’ll be able to soon. The alphabet is simple, and when my sight is .a little better reading will he no trick at all.” He has been able to read with his fingers for years, and physicians expressed the belief that he will learn as much in three months about reading and writing as a child starting to school would learn in six years. When Musselman looked at himself in a mirror he jokingly remarked that ho “looked something like he ’thought a monkey looked.” Blit he admitted that everybody, including himself, was better looking than his “mind picture” of them. Though an ordinary room contains more wonders for him than Yellowstone Park has for those who had their sight, that national park is one of the things in particular Musselman wants to see. He*said he would like to be a travelling salesman, so that he wquld see “lots of the country.”

The removal of a mass of substance behind the cornea of his left eye brought sight to Earl Musselman, Dr. Moore explained. “The great thing about it all,” he said, “is that a man born .blind can now see. I learned by flashing a light close to his eyes that the optic nerve was not atrophied. Only the left eye showed a chance of giving sight; tho right eye was completely gone. I gave him gas in order that the eye might be absolutely still, and then made an incision at the bottom of tho eye. I went through the cornea, where I found a mass of substance, connective tissue, which lay behind the cornea. This was not growing and apparently had been there since bir£h. I pulled out the mass, about th 6 ,size of a pea. ) “There was no pupil. It was what wo call ‘obliterated’ —so I made one at the bottom of the iris, rather than in the centre, where the pupil normally is. This may cause him trouble in focussing, but can be corrected with glasses. By removal of this mass and tho making of the pupil, the light could get through the lens to the retina, and, since the optic nerve was not atrophied, he can now see.” Mr. D. W‘- Laubach described the joy and .bewilderment of his nephew on his “awakening.” “He seemed amazed when he first saw the' hospital and its attaches,” Mr. Laubach said. “Everything was strange to him. He wanted to see everything at once. The colouring of flowers, particularly, fascinated him.”