Soldiers Ate “Cherries” Now Totally Blind
(Rec. 2 p.m.) LONDON, Dec. 21. Twenty-seven soldiers who ate “cherries” in New Guinea and became totally blind as a result, have arrived back in Britain, acording to Mr. C. D. Torvell, scientific adviser to the Forces in the Far East. Speaking to the Liverpool Rotary Club, he said that science so far had found no means of restoring their sightThe nickname for the fruit was “finger cherry.” It looked and tasted like an ordinary cherry. Eating one or two caused no harmful effects, but as many as nine or ten produced total blindness within a few hours. The Army authorities, when they discovered this, destroyed as many “cherry” trees as possible with arsenic.
The peculiar properties of the trees were realised cnly at the end of 1942,
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Northern Advocate, 21 December 1945, Page 5
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134Soldiers Ate “Cherries” Now Totally Blind Northern Advocate, 21 December 1945, Page 5
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