THAT WONDERFUL DISCOVERY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12240, 8 April 1903, Page 7

THAT WONDERFUL DISCOVERY.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,ln to-day's Supplement of the New Zealand Herald I find, under the heating " A Wonderful Discovery," a statement regarding an alleged discovery by a Professor Peter Stiens, of Paris. The professor claims to have constructed an apparatus by means of which seeing is mad« possible regardless of the human eye. Direct communication with the brain is said to give sight to people with sightless oves. If true, such a discovery would, indeed, bo of the utmost importance to the blind, but, alas! sober science denies the possibility of bedily seeing without the organ of vision. It is well_ to state this clearly for the sake of preventing false hopes to be* raised by incurably blind persons. Sight, as such, will never become established without the help of the optic nerve and its outer endings— retina. _ The professor's alleged discovery ranks with similar experiments in rcrard to hearing. Occasionally we read of smart people. who pretend to make th? deaf rationally hear independent of the functions of the nerve of hearing. Needless to say that such experiments have never realised yet what they have promised to do. Nil in intellect!! quod non prius fuerit in sensu! Aristotle already knew. Thero is nothing in our brain which was not previously in cur tenses! —I am, etc., 13, ,Schwa BZEAcn, M.D. Auckland, April 4, 1903.