Eye Care Blog

Adults who become blind after several decades of normal or at least useful sight represent a different problem. Their psychological and practical difficulties are manifold. The sudden onset of blindness is a terrifying experience. Apart from the helplessness and inability to become mobile there is a horror of incapacity, accompanied by the realization that without help the sufferer is completely isolated, socially and physically. The adult who becomes blind is liable to become deeply embittered, much more so than if he or she had lost a limb. The loss of a limb is measurable and understandable. Sudden blindness is far more abstract, for a while incomprehensible. And because the loss of sight is rarely complete, the patient lives in hope of cure. Bouts of depression alternate with pitiable optimism. If the patient is rich, or if the public health authority permits, he or she will seek charlatan as well as professional advice. He or she will become subject to advice from the market place, faith healers and the like. Newly blind people will sometimes travel grêat distances to seek remission. If religious they will seek shrines and miracles (and some people become religious when they become blind). Equally they will alter their philosophy of life, to purge that which is supposed to have robbed them of their sight. Read the rest of this entry »

There is a well-known story about Noel Coward. The dramatist was out walking with two small children one day when the party came into view of two dogs engaged in the act of copulation. `Uncle Noel, what are they doing?’ cried one of the boys. ‘It’s perfectly obvious,’ replied Coward. ‘Can’t you see? The dog in front is blind, and the dog behind is pushing him to St Dunstan’s!’

The subtlety of this anecdote lies in the substitution of one taboo subject by another. Historically, blindness has carried different cultural connotations. Among the ancients it was often considered as a punishment meted out by the gods. In the best known of the Greek myths, Oedipus gouges out his own eyes in a hubristic act of self-inflicted retribution. In modern times blindness is more simply perceived as a misfortune. Read the rest of this entry »