SEEING WITHOUT EYES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19829, 2 May 1927, Page 11

SEEING WITHOUT EYES

A STRANGE STORY “DISCOVERING THE VISUAL WORLD. ’ ’ Mrs Leila Heyn is a young American woman, totally blind since birth (says a writer in John o’ London’s Weekly). A year ago she came to Paris and placed herself under the care of Dr Rene Maublanc, who ever since 1922, has devoted his life to trying to make the blind see “through their skin,” as it were, by an intensive and continuous psychological and physiological education. After eight months, according to a volume just published jointly by patient and doctor, Mrs Heyn has been made to “discover the visual world” —so much so, that she can tell what a person entering a room has on a plate. It is an extraordinary story that the two have to tell, yet, lest the blind imagipe that the end of their misery is at hand, let it be said at once that ouly an exceptional mind—such as Mrs Heyn apparently possesses—can achieve the rigorous discipline of attention, amounting almost to a state of hypnotism (though the patient remains perfectly conscious), which lies at the very root of the system. The astonishing nature of Dr Maublanc’s education will perhaps be better grasped if one stresses this factor in the case of persons blind all their lives, from birth onwards; such stricken ones have not the slightest notion what people and things are like. Thus, Mrs Heyn did not know what letterpress was like, nor had she the remotest conception of colour, or of trees, or even of the human face—the first she ever saw, she says, was that of her benefactor. The book ends on a dual note of warning and of interrogation:—“The reader,” concludes Mrs Heyn, “should understand that extra-retinous vision is very capricious. Why, for example, was I unable to see a solitary mountain in Switzerland, and yet see, and locate, the movements of a gondola in Venice? Why, on certain days, am I only able to see objects at a distance, and not close up?” What is the use of eight months of exhausting concentration, just to detect a gondola or a piece of bread? Some may ask. The answer must be left to the blind. Meanwhile, Mrs Heyn’s revelations have caught the attention of the Sorbonne, which rightly scents more of scientific than of practical value in “paroptical vision.”