Eye Care Blog

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. This he was able to do, and the strain floated with the football until, by the time the latter had been reduced to the size of a period in a newspaper, it was entirely gone. The relief continued as long as the patient remembered the black spot, but as he could not remember it all the time, I suggested another method of gaining permanent relief. This was to make his sight voluntarily worse, a plan against which he protested with considerable emphasis.

“Good heavens!” he said. “Isn’t my sight bad enough without making it worse?”

After a week of argument, however, he consented to try the method, and the result was extremely satisfactory. After he had learned to see two or more lights where there was only one, by straining to see a point above the light while still trying to see the light as well as when looking directly at it, he became able to avoid the unconscious strain that had produced his double and multiple vision and was not troubled by these superfluous images any more. In a similar manner other illusions^- were prevented.

One of the last illusions to disappear was his belief that an effort was required to remember black. His logic on this point was overwhelming, but after many demonstrations he was convinced that no effort was required to let go, and when he realized this, both his vision and his mental condition immediately improved.

He finally became able to read 20/10 or more, and although more than fifty-five years of age, he also read diamond type at from six to twenty-four inches. His night blindness was relieved, his attacks of day blindness ceased, and he told me the color of the eyes of his wife and children. One day he said to me:

“Doctor, I thank you for what you have done for my sight, but no words can express the gratitude I feel for what you have done for my mind.”

Some years later he called to tell me that there had been no relapse.

From all these facts it will be seen that the problems of vision are far more intimately associated with the mind than is ordinarily supposed, and that they can by no means be solved by putting concave, convex, or astigmatic lenses before the eyes.

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