When asked to remember black with his eyes closed and covered he said he could not do so, and he saw every color but the black which one ought normally to see when_ the optic nerve is not subject to the stimulus of light. He had been an enthusiastic football player at college, however, and at last he found that he could remember a black football. I asked him to imagine that this football had been thrown into the sea and that it was being carried outward by the tide, becoming constantly smaller but no less black. Read the rest of this entry »
A shortsighted young woman, to take the opposite of this case, had a passion for mathematics and anatomy and excelled in those subjects. She learned to use the ophthalmoscope as easily as the farsighted girl had learned Latin. Almost immediately she saw the optic nerve and noted that the center was whiter than the periphery. She saw the light-colored lines, the arteries; and the darker ones, the veins; and she saw the light streaks on the blood vessels. Some specialists never become able to do this, and no one could do it without normal vision. Her vision, therefore, must have been temporarily normal when she did it. Her vision for figures, although not normal, was better than for letters. Read the rest of this entry »
Defective vision, as I have said, is the result of an abnormal condition of the mind. Glasses may sometimes neutralize the effect of this condition upon the eyes, and by making a person more comfortable may improve his mental faculties to some extent; but we do not alter fundamentally the condition of the mind, and by confirming it in a bad habit we may make it worse. Read the rest of this entry »
