TWELVE YEARS BLIND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24326, 17 June 1940, Page 9

TWELVE YEARS BLIND

OLD MINER REGAINS SIGHT (By Trans-Tasman Air Mail) (From Our Own Correspondent) SYDNEY, June 12. Two light-green ii’on bed posts in a Newcastle hospital never seemed beautiful to anyone until Mr Richard Hincks, at 73 years of age, recovered his sight after 12 years of blindness. The bed posts were the first things he

saw when bandages were removed from his eyes. Mr Hincks lost his sight in a coalmine accident, through the late discharge of explosives he had been using. When the smoke of that explosion cleared away he was found lying on the ground, his face fearfully battered. When he regained consciousness he was blind. So the curtain of blindness was drawn down on Mr Hincks’s lifeOperation after operation failed to restore his sight, and finally the doctors abandoned hope of Hincks ever being able to see again. Then one day early this year he was beneath a tree at his home. He found he could see, through the darkness, little white specks moving. Forgetful of his blindness, he called to his wife, “ Look at these ants! ’’ The ants were large white ducklings walking near his feet, but Hincks gained the belief that there was still hope and that some day he would regain his sight. He went again to hospital to the doctor who first attended him with infinite kindness, but whom he had never seen. He agreed to undergo another

operation, which the doctor completed. One morning the nurses removed the bandages from his eyes. Before him Hincks saw mists clearing and colours forming. What he saw took shape as uprights of a light green—the posts at the foot of his bed. He saw the nurses in their uniforms going about the ward. “I felt wonderfully happy. You have no idea how happy.” said Hincks. One of the things he most likes to look at now is the face of the doctor who restored sight to him. In the 12 years, Mr Hincks flnd,s that many changes have occurred in his district. He remembers it as mostly bush, but to-day it is a well-populated suburb, with double-decker buses running frequently from Newcastle. Looking into his mirror he does not recognise himself.