SUDDENLY STRUCK BLIND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19956, 26 May 1928, Page 8

SUDDENLY STRUCK BLIND.

WORKMAN'S TRYING ORDEAL. STRANGE CASES RECALLED. [from ovb own correspondent. J SYDNEY. May 10. The case of a riveter who was struck blind while working at a great height on a building in Sydney is puzzling doctors, because the man was not subjected to any gieat shock which could have ac counted for the seizure. There are 011 leccrd scores of cases of blindness which h<is followed some great shock to the system, notably during the war. Harris Whitehead, the riveter in question, told a remarkable story. He saic' that he had been working about 60ft. above the ground and was hanging, head downwards, from a girder, inserting rivets, when his eyesight suddenly failed His position was a perilous one, but he climbed back to the girder and sat still for a few minutes, hoping that his sight would soon return. After a few minutes he called to other workmen and explained his plight. One of them carried Whitehead down a ladder, and he was conveyed to hospital. What mystified the doctors at the hospital was the fact that all the 12 cranial nerves appeared to be normal, and the man was certainly normal in all other respects. This'was a most unaccountable happening, for, according to all experience, other sympathetic and allied cranial nerves should have bsen affected when the maj was struck blind. Whitehead explained that everything was black, and that he had a "splitting headache." Days later his eyesight began to return. It has been explained that such blindness could occur without any obvious cause. A queur example was that of Ruby Rugg, of London, who was blind for four years, but who regained her sight in the course of an air raid. Recently Frank Smith, a boy at Orange, New South Wales, was stricken suddenly blind while at play, from no ascertainable cause. Persons struck by lightning often remain blind for days. Clement Hickey, a Sydney boy, thus blinded in 19k53, is alleged to have had his sight restored by hynotic suggestion, given by a well-known specialist. Id all these cases the eyes are normal, but there is a "block" further back on the nerve path from the eye to the brain. Dumbness of this type is also common. A boy named Ernest Hill was struck dumb after he had been frightened by a tramp. He was dumb for three months and his speech returned when he was singled out for a special prize by a "Father Christmas" at a Christmas party. A remarkable occurred at Cowna, New South Wales, in 1925, when Charles Lawrence was struck blind on the occasion of a thunderstorm on a Monday, and his sight was restored in the course of mother storm on the following Friday.