Caxton's Book: A Collection of Essays, Poems, Tales, and Sketches.Rhodes, W. H. (William Henry)
Science
Caxton's Book: A Collection of Essays, Poems, Tales, and Sketches.
Rhodes, W. H. (William Henry)
Science fiction
He was born in the house where the committee found him, nine years ago
the 15th of last January. Nothing of an unusual character occurred until
his second year, when it was announced by a neighbor that the boy was
completely blind, his parents never having been suspicious of the fact
before that time, although the mother declared that for some months
anterior to the discovery she had noticed some acts of the child that
seemed to indicate mental imbecility rather than blindness. From this
time forward until a few months ago nothing happened to vary the boy's
existence except a new remedy now and then prescribed by neighbors for
the supposed malady. He was mostly confined to a darkened chamber, and
was never trusted alone out of doors. He grew familiar, by touch and
sound, with the forms of most objects about him, and could form very
accurate guesses of the color and texture of them all. His
conversational powers did not seem greatly impaired, and he readily
acquired much useful knowledge from listening attentively to everything
that was said in his presence. He was quite a musician, and touched the
harmonicon, banjo and accordeon with skill and feeling. He was unusually
sensitive to the presence of light, though incapable of seeing any
object with any degree of distinctness; and hence the attempt to exclude
light as the greatest enemy to the recovery of vision. It was very
strange that up to the time of the examination of the committee, no
scientific examination of the boy's eye had been made by a competent
oculist, the parents contenting themselves with the chance opinions of
visitors or the cheap nostrums of quacks. It is perhaps fortunate for
science that this was the case, as a cure for the eye might have been an
extinction of its abnormal power.
On the evening of the 12th of December last (1875), the position of the
child's bed was temporarily changed to make room for a visitor. The bed
was placed against the wall of the room, fronting directly east, with
the window opening at the side of the bed next to the head. The boy was
sent to bed about seven o'clock, and the parents and their visitor were
seated in the front room, spending the evening in social intercourse.
The moon rose full and cloudless about half-past seven o'clock, and
shone full in the face of the sleeping boy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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